?
Reefs of Myths: Towards the History of Cybernetics in the Soviet Union
The history of the cybernetics in the USSR is widely described in the memoirs of the direct participants of the events and in the works of historians (see for example). Perhaps the most interesting was the early period – ended in 1955 when the first positive publications on cybernetics appeared in the USSR. There are the polar opinions about the nature of these events. Many problems are still the object of acute disputes. Was the Wiener book available for Soviet scientists? Was it anti-cybernetics campaign at all? If it really was then who were the initiators and what were the consequences? How the rehabilitation of the cybernetics did begin? The answers on all these and some other questions are still determined often not by documented facts but by myths dominated in public awareness. In this work we try to describe shortly the nature of anti-cybernetics campaign of 1950-1955 and to point out to some contradictions and anachronisms in the literature.
In book
