The Secret Behind Soviet Union's Version Of The Internet

The OGAS was a proposal for a computer network in the Soviet Union in the 1960s by architect Viktor Glushkov. The network was to have three tiers with a computer center in Moscow, mid-level centers in cities, and local terminals for real-time communication using the telephone infrastructure. Glushkov aimed to use the system for electronic payments to move the Soviet Union towards a moneyless economy. The project was rejected in 1970 due to bureaucratic infighting and the centralization of control seen as excessive by some. The idea was later revived in the form of the EGSVT and SOFE projects, but they too were underfunded and unsuccessful. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union considered developing a cybernetic system for resource allocation in the early 1960s, but the idea was abandoned by the early 1970s due to concerns about Party control of the economy. By the end of the 1970s, the Academset project aimed to construct a nationwide network, but only the Leningrad part was implemented before the dissolution of the USSR. In 1990, the USSR/Russia obtained an independent global Internet connection via telephone to Finland.

[Krolmir]

Okay, so many mistakes here, just to name a few:

-That Valdimir Kitov has nothing to do with OGAS, you are confusing him with Anatoly Kitov who was the father of soviet cybernetics.

-Kitov was noth the creator of the OGAS system, that was Glushkov. Kitov proposed a previous system that Glushkov used as a basis for OGAS, but that's a different story.

-OGAS didn't fail because of a lack or information sharing or lack of technology to build it, the problem was just politics. Glushkov proposed the implementation of the system several times in different forms but he was always rejected by the Soviet authorities.

Implementing the OGAS would have required a complete overhaul of the Soviet structure of power as it would take a lot of power from the economical planners, factory managers and government officials to put it directly on the hands of the workers. By the 1960s and 1970s the USSR was controled by bureucrats that didn't care about the development of a socialist system. The ones in charge after Stalin's death were no longer communists like the first Bolsheviks. They were already introducing more and more market elements in the economy that were a complete contradiction of what OGAS pretended to achieve.

In the end the system didn't fail because it never was adoptes or even tried in the first place. As soon as they saw it they noticed that it was a direct threat to their political power.

As Marx said those who control the means of production hold the true political power, and that was true even in the Soviet Union.

-OGAS was not just a "Soviet internet". The system was conceived to completely change the way the Soviet economy worked. If implemented it would have leaded later to sometiing similar to the internet as we know it today but at that moment it was just too far.

It was intended to change the way economical calculation was made by collecting better information directly from the workplaces in the entire country and processing it in different nodes.

This way one of the biggest problems the Soviet economy had would have been solved but as I said before it was too late for this.

[garcope]

Great video....have subbed and await on the Edge for some more truth, just like a junkie scoring some scag!! Thanks!!

[ervie]

Look Edge, less flapping those lips repeating OGAS ad nauseum and give us some examples of Soviet contributions to present day internet.