Soviet Computing: Developmental Impulses

V. Shilov; Krayneva I.; Pivovarov N.

doi:10.1109/SoRuCom.2017.00009

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Soviet Computing: Developmental Impulses

Ch. 4. P. 13–22.

Shilov V., Krayneva I., Pivovarov N.

Paper describes the early period in the development of Soviet digital computers and R&D policy in this field (late 1940s – mid 1950s). The authors focus on the Soviet scientists and economic executives’ awareness of the new types of computing machines, their initial application area – the Soviet Atomic Project, and the conditions in which the first computers were made. The Atomic Project leaders realised the value of the new machines but were planning to use only the limited number of them.

Keywords: USSR Academy of Science BESM computer Late Stalin’s era USSR’s R&D policy digital computers Atomic project

In book

Selected Papers 2017 Fourth International Conference on Computer Technology in Russia and in the Former Soviet Union (SORUCOM)

IEEE CS Pre, 2017.

The Women Who Count: Gendering Calculations in the Soviet Atomic Project

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Accumulating institutional histories, nuclear memoirs, declassified files, and transcripts of interviews with nuclear veterans, this chapter discusses feminization of the human calculations as a gender bias in governing the Soviet Atomic Project in the 1940s and 1950s. The authors focus on both huge participation of young women in the performing of voluminous calculations for the ...

Added: May 20, 2025

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Added: December 19, 2022

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The historian R.Yu. Vipper left the USSR in 1924, worked successfully in Latvia, and then, in 1941, returned to the USSR after the annexation of the Baltic States. What was the attitude to the "connected" historian, how successfully did he himself get used to the realities of the Soviet academic life, how did the ideological ...

Added: December 15, 2018

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The article analyses institutional changes in economic research on the Soviet North in the mid-1950s due to which the concept of USSR northern territories itself changed. Through the case of Commission on Issues of the North (operating under control of Council for the Study of Productive Potential at the USSR Academy of Sciences) and the ...

Added: July 3, 2018

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This paper deals with the post-war period (late 1940s – mid 1950s) in the development of Soviet digital electronic computational tools and formation of the USSR science and technology policy in this field. The authors studied how well the Soviet scientists and managers were aware of the new aspects of this policy, detected its primary ...

Added: November 10, 2016