How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet

by Benjamin Peters

How, despite thirty years of effort, Soviet attempts to build a national computer network were undone by socialists who seemed to behave like capitalists.

Between 1959 and 1989, Soviet scientists and officials made numerous attempts to network their nation—to construct a nationwide computer network. None of these attempts succeeded, and the enterprise had been abandoned by the time the Soviet Union fell apart. Meanwhile, ARPANET, the American precursor to the Internet, went online in 1969. Why did the Soviet network, with top-level scientists and patriotic incentives, fail while the American network succeeded? In How Not to Network a Nation, Benjamin Peters reverses the usual cold war dualities and argues that the American ARPANET took shape thanks to well-managed state subsidies and collaborative research environments and the Soviet network projects stumbled because of unregulated competition among self-interested institutions, bureaucrats, and others. The capitalists behaved like socialists while the socialists behaved like capitalists.

After examining the midcentury rise of cybernetics, the science of self-governing systems, and the emergence in the Soviet Union of economic cybernetics, Peters complicates this uneasy role reversal while chronicling the various Soviet attempts to build a “unified information network.” Drawing on previously unknown archival and historical materials, he focuses on the final, and most ambitious of these projects, the All-State Automated System of Management (OGAS), and its principal promoter, Viktor M. Glushkov. Peters describes the rise and fall of OGAS—its theoretical and practical reach, its vision of a national economy managed by network, the bureaucratic obstacles it encountered, and the institutional stalemate that killed it. Finally, he considers the implications of the Soviet experience for today's networked world.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Russia, Technology, Science, Politics, Stem

298 pages, Hardcover

First published March 25, 2016

About the author

Benjamin Peters is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Tulsa and affiliated faculty at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School.

Reviews

[Michael Burnam-Fink · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a strand of libertarian internet thought that argues that computer networks, personal liberties, and immense profits are bound together like a coaxial cable. No authoritarian or socialist nation could ever invent the Internet. At best, they can buy these technologies from robust free societies. And on one level this is true: The Internet was invented by Americans, not Soviets. But on another level, this is false. The early internet was robustly supported by a profoundly non-capitalist military-academic complex. And in the Soviet Union, mathematicians, engineers, and cyberneticists worked on their own network.

In How Not to Network a Nation, Peters traces the origins and collapses of the Soviet network. Anatoly Kitov and Viktor Glushkov, two mathematicians inspired by a copy of Norbert Wiener's Cybernetics in a military library, conceived of computerization as the solution to the creaky command economy of the Soviet Union. A computer network would serve as a national nervous system, linking automated factories with statistical planners in regional centers and Moscow. Glushkov got his own research center, named Kybergrad, with hacker culture Soviet-style (including a saxophone playing robot as a mascot), but plans for OGAS, the All-State-Automated-System, never seemed to quite jell. Even as the Soviets introduced computers to the factory floor and long-distance networks for military radars, the idea of a national civilian computer network remained just that; an idea. Research was sidetracked into problems of statistical management, and the program was finally killed by the Politburo in 1970, a year after ARPANET went online.

Peters deploys the concepts of hetarchy, and Arendt's theory of polis and oikos to explain the collapse, but behind the complicated theory the matter is simply one of power. The high powers in the Politburo who ran the Ministry of Finance, Defense, and the statistical planning bureaus were unwilling to delegate power to dreamy cyberneticists. The low powers who controlled the material facts of the Soviet economy were unwilling to give up their black market perks and influence. When the moment of truth came in 1970, the cyberneticians lacked the allies to fund their dream, and the network died stillborn.

This is a dense academic book, probably best read in partnership with a volume on the Soviet economy. The human glimpses of Glushkov and Kybergrad are oasis in a wilderness of theory and history. But for a certain kind of scholar, this is like a portal into an alternate world, where the 'why' of networks was answered by the imperatives of dialectical materialism and the class struggle, rather than serving as the all consuming vortex of lies, distractions, advertising, and surveillance that the internet has become.

[Eric Gardner · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the thirty some years since it fell, American analysis of the Soviet Union has been reduced to one sentiment: communism failed because capitalism is superior. Professional people—especially ones employed by media companies—spend an awful lot of time and energy attempting to rationalize its downfall through clichéd ideological arguments. They bring up the work of Hayek, stories about full grocery aisles, or simply argue that people are too self-interested for mass collectivism to work. And yes, I understand and even agree with many of these arguments, but it’s also lazy. It’s like analyzing the most recent Super Bowl and concluding that the New England Patriots won because they wanted it more. In How Not To Network a Nation Benjamin Peters provides an exhaustive look at one of the functional problems that plagued the Soviet experiment: information.

Underpinning any idea of socialism or communism is central planning. Loosely defined, central planning is the idea that government controls the means of production and goes about maximizing the economy and welfare of the country. In theory, the people determine what they want to produce (through voting) and the country organizes around that. Again, let’s disregard ideological or theoretical arguments about its viability and focus on what it would need at a functional level.

Data: To make investing decisions a government would need a large amount of reliable data. Reams of information on customer and industrial demand and industrial supply, crop yields and forecasts. This is in addition to accurate demographic, medical and other information needed for the health of the people.

Standardization: All input and output would need to be consistent in order to enable the next point.

Coordination: The government would then need to be able to sift through the data to ensure all industries are coordinating production to maximize finite resources. Eg. Let’s say they want to build 100,000 new cars. 100,000 new cars will require 400,000 new tires and 100,000 seatbelts. What will the impact be on the roads? Will they have to build more grading machines to expand the highways? More railroads to transport the cars? Steel needs to be available for the raw production of automobiles and creating and shipping the component parts.

As you can see, this is a tall order. History shows that the Soviet Union failed—but it wasn’t for a lack of effort. Peters reports in 1962, 1.3 million people (in a nation of about 210 million) were employed in Soviet accounting. That same year the planners accidentally skipped the 1959 census data for their five-year plan. The result was a plan that under-produced goods by about 4 million people. Oddly enough, modern computers could theoretically have solved the Soviet Union’s information problem. Enterprise software like SAP enables manufactures to track individual paint pellets as they transform into a finished product sprayed on cars. Cloud-based computing solutions enable companies to analyze and manage interactional supply chains at a relatively low cost. Just-in-time manufacturing enables the rapid manufacturing processes needed to produce products for diverse citizens. It’s impossible not to contemplate how Soviet socialism could have been functionally enabled by capitalist technology.

If networked computers were the solution to the Soviet Union’s existential problem, why didn’t they create them? “American APRANET initially took shape thanks to well-managed state subsidies and collaborative research environments,” Peters writes. “The comparable Soviet network project stumbled due to widespread unregulated competition among self-interested institutions, bureaucrats, and other key actors.” Basically, the socialists acted like capitalists and the capitalists acted like socialists.

What a wild world we live in.

This review originally appeared at www.ericgardner.net.

[George Kaslov · Rating 4 out of 5]

In "How not to network a nation" Benjamin Peters covers all of the attempts to network the USSR spanning a period of over 30 years, of which project OGAS lasted the longest. In the early 50s inspired by the American SAGE computer system and the Norbert Wiener s Cybernetics the Madness began.

First in the early 50s, cybernetics had to be rehabilitated from their capitalist tendencies (whatever that was supposed to mean) after Stalin s death. Next their approach to the idea of networks was quite different:

To oversimplify, Baran foresaw a national state network simulating a brain without a body, while Glushkov (and Beer) anticipated a network nation simulating a body with a brain—a government in touch with its people.

Also because of this difference the project became much larger than anything the Americans had planned. Americans way of thinking was to just connect their military and scientific computers and then figure out what to do with it, while the Soviets intended to use the network to take over their command economy.

Now, just because cybernetics were rehabilitated, that didn't mean that they were free of other ideological hurdles:

Fedorenko and Glushkov felt they had no other choice: they had to align their technical national architecture with the political system architecture.

Meaning to even suggest that in order to get anything done you had to go side vise and zigzag through the hierarchy would make them politically poisonous to them selves and others.

Followed by factory managers and middle managers distrust of the project, fearing that they might become obsolete, and not to mention entire ministries not wanting this system for them selves for they might get obsolete but also not wanting to surrender it to anyone else for fears that the ministry that takes it over might become more influential then themselves.

And the final nail in the coffin, they had interest but no direct support from the Kremlin to tell the military to stop hoarding their technology and share:

The biggest advantage that the United States wielded over the USSR appears to have less to do with the market independence of private commerce than the porousness of research, resources and knowledge flows between military and civilian projects.

This was a fascinating and enlightening read with a very fitting title, but I am afraid its academic style might put off most people.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a dense academic tome, which normally I'm very much in favor of, but the downside of this is that it's hard to tell when he's not making sense because the ideas seem wrong or because I don't understand his terminology. Either way, it definitely seems to have been a very well-researched book.

What strikes me as most strange is that he seems to have set up this idea that the "standard" thinking about why the Soviets didn't set up an internet was because they were technologically backwards or something, and goes out to bust that - but that has never been my impression of the Soviet Union. In fact, the main thesis of the book - that the Soviets failed to create their network because of bureaucratic in-fighting and power economies - is exactly what I would have thought would stymie communist command economies like this. It seems strange to think of the Soviets as being bad at technology, since they have a reputation for being quite good at science and technology, and quite bad at coordination (which is exactly what failed here). I'm not sure if this disconnect is because I have an unusual view of the Soviet economy or if he has an unusual view of the stereotypes about the Soviet economy or if I've just completely missed his point (though I can't imagine how that is possible, since he really belabors this point, over and over again, about the mismatch between hierarchies and heterarchies).

3.5 of 5 stars

[Koen Crolla · Rating 1 out of 5]

This reads like a parody of American discourse about the Soviet Union and of know-nothing obscurantists in the humanities writing about technology. Whatever bare facts are here may be technically correct, but Peters invariably tries to overload them with spurious context and connotations that would make Orwell blush—everything is cynical power struggles between bureaucrats and loose-cannon generals and political purges, always phrased in exactly that way hack American political commentators always talk about the Soviet Union. Even getting to those bare facts is a slog, though, because Peters is one of those people who think name-dropping literally every single 20th-century continental philosopher and literary theorist is what makes academic writing good in the humanities; I'm sure the fact that Deleuze pretended his "abandonment of meaning" bullshit owed a debt to Shannon's foundational work in information theory is relevant to literally anything.
The whole thing should have been a shortish long-form article about OGAS, and written by someone else. As, indeed, it initially was.

[Parker · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a lot of really fun and surprising history in here, and also some thoughtful academic analysis of what it means. It's definitely written like an academic text, which probably caps my rating at "liked it" under most circumstances.

I've seen Peters present this and related material at conferences, and that's really great. It's why I picked the book up in the first place.

[TS Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The biggest advantage that the United States wielded over the USSR appears to have less to do with the market independence of private commerce than the porousness of research, resources and knowledge flows between military and civilian projects."

[Artur · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an okay book on the under researched topic of Soviet networking ambitions and ideas with a wealth of facts and interesting tidbits about various networking projects in the Soviet Union that ultimately ends up clogged with too many irrelevant references and academic blabber which makes it hard to get through, though still valuable. It gets easier to read in the second part where OGAS and Glushkov play the bigger role, but boy, how much Peters likes to namedrop and use convoluted sentences full of fancy words to convey simple ideas. This is a popular science piece, a reasonably good one, especially given that the topic is not that well covered in the English-speaking world, but it desperately tries to be more, to do more, to create some new vision for how the Soviet Union functioned as a system and fight the common narrative about it(which it present's in quite a strawman-y way). The story it tells is valuable and the tragic fates of those who tried to bring cybernetic communism to the country ridden with bureaucracy and blat are worth knowing, but it probably could have been better. Still, in the light of absence of viable alternatives a worth read for anyone seeking for an alternative view on the networking and digital communications overall and not knowing Russian to read the works and accounts of people Peters is talking about in original.

[andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

couldnt finish it. a child's understanding of the soviet economy coupled with uncited anecdotes (or Cold War-era stereotypes, similarly unfounded in their original instance) used as evidence. "the civil war against the tsar" on one page, with the main problem of planning seemingly being a shortage of paper and pencils on the other. with the number of lazy human-nature totalitarianism-infused readings and paragraphs of made-up bullshit, it shouldn't have passed through a worthy editor, let alone an award committee.

reading some abandoned livejournals of always-drunk and insomniac post-soviet professors still remains the best source on soviet computing, with the biographical and descriptive parts of this book remaining on the level of informatics textbooks. it'd eat dust as good as they do anyway.

[Manuel Romero · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aunque algunos argumentos del autor pueden resultar poco fundamentados, es un documento fundamental para entender el OGAS y el desarrollo de la cibernética en la URSS. Al final, la burocracia se dio cuenta de que el proyecto de Glushkov podía socavar su poder, el cual podía permanecer intacto si seguían el rumbo de Liberman. Las propuestas del OGAS tan sólo se aplicaron parcialmente para modernizar algunas empresas y se abandonó completamente su proyecto político. Una historia sobre el futuro que pudo haber tenido la planificación.

[cypher · Rating 4 out of 5]

DNF after about 20%, it was interesting, but it felt like it was more about general knowledge and less about russia specifically. not what i was looking for right now.

“in russia nothing works but everything can be arranged”

[Chris Esposo · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the more fascinating books I've read in a while on this topic, though that's not saying much given the dearth of text on this subject matter. The text outlines the history of Soviet attempts at building an internet in their nation, which was a contemporary or slightly earlier venture to the US/ARPA attempt at doing the same thing starting in the 1950s and 60s. Though, the Soviet attempt failed partially out of failure in technology, as they did not have some critical technologies like the packet-switching apparatus, and partially out of internal political strife, since Soviet network communications technologies were jealously hoarded by the Soviet military. Whereas this may have been true in the United States initially, one critical difference is that the engineers of the US internet had the incentive to exploit the network for private gain, and the DoD/ARPA was not averse to letting civilian activity to persist in the early network. This was not true in the USSR although academic institutions were similarly connected to each other like in the US, the Soviet military considered any further expansion of civilian activity to be wasteful, thus retarding the growth of their internet system.

Another interesting fact was that Soviet cyberneticist also derive their heritage from Norbert Weiner, with a truly weird twist in history, an Aleksi Lyapunov was the bridge between the two worlds, who doesn't seem to be related to Alexsander Lyapunov, one of the fathers of control theory and an earlier researcher on dynamical systems, which heavily influenced the birth of cybernetics. Also, the Soviet authorities seem to have banned the early importation of ideas from Weiner and the cybernetics movement as a "bourgeois pseudoscience" because of its attempt to contextualize human systems as part of a giant mechanistic system dynamic, minimizing the 'humanity' of the workers, and likening them to a cog. I found this characterization as funny, as a cursory look at Soviet propaganda and internal materials often shows workers busily working in factories kind of like automata. Ironically cybernetics would live on in Russia as an established subject matter long after it died out in the US.

The major issue with the book is that it focuses too much on the internal politics of establishing the various Soviet internets, and not enough on the fundamental technologies. I wanted to learn more about how cybernetic systems were going to inform the Soviet Gosplan, what were the mathematical ideas that underpinned this notion? Students get some hint when they take their first linear algebra text as one of the first applied works they're probably introduced to is from the works of Wassily Leontief, using matrix algebra to model input-output systems, a work that won him the economics Nobel prize. A slightly informed reader could start to understand how the Gosplan could be constructed from these formal principles, then expanded upon in the cybernetics, but none of it is discussed in any detail.

Almost 3/4 of the book is a history of the political maneuverings with the rest a mix of interesting facts and random exposition of the technical details. One interesting fact is that Soviet planners were attempting to establish a cashless society with the cybernetic system, and clearly they anticipated credit card systems, and possibly the first hints of cryptocurrencies. The book is peppered with some interesting facts like this, just not enough to make the reading consistently interesting.

Overall not a bad book, and the only book I'm aware of on this topic in English. Conditional recommend if you're into this topic

[Kalle Id · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a detailed look into the various Soviet plans to build a national (civilian) computer network, this book is extremely worthwhile. Where Peters fails is the attempt to make the Soviet projects (OGAS in particular) relevant to the present in the Conclusions. Furthermore, he essentially misses his own point when he keeps comparing the OGAS to the Arpanet (predecessor to the present-day internet). The two network projects were extremely different: OGAS was going to network the Union's entire industrial base and increase the efficiency of the command economy with a computer network. The Arpanet, in contrast, created connections between a handful of scientists and scientific institutions.

Apart from the actual content, there were some stylistical things that really bugged me: Peters kept constantly re-explaining things he had already said (and pre-explaining things he would discuss later), which didn't add anything but wasted a lot of space. It was also odd that there was not a cyrillic letter in sight, and no explanation on which system of translitteration was used (although I admit this is a common failing). This as especially odd in books and articles originally published in Russian: checking the sources is made a few magnitudes more difficult when you have to revert the translitterated Russian text back into cyrillic before you can actually find the original.

But yes, apart from those complaints the proper contents of the book are very good. But I would maybe skip both the introduction and conclusions as quite superfluous.

[Dalinar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aunque el libro está escrito en inglés y no he encontrado edición en español, haré la review en español por la longitud de la misma y mi facilidad.
Antes de nada quiero decir que recomiendo este libro porque es muy difícil leer un libro de esta temática en cuestión enfocado en el lado sovietico, aunque soy muy crítico con la visión del autor y quizás en algunos temas inclina la balanza a opiniones de las cuales disiento, desde luego tiene un trabajo de investigación y análisis que como mínimo son reconocibles. Por eso mismo, al menos, invito a leerlo.

Primeramente el autor válida y compra muchos de los argumentos liberales “capitalistas” clásicos en este estilo cuando él mismo se asigna la “misión” de “dar un paso más” respecto a las investigaciones sobre el ‘internet sovietico’.
Considerando que, desde mi visión, en 1956 la realidad de la URSS y el bloque socialista cambia sin retorno, existe un golpe de los revisionistas y una purga de los comunistas que se hace notable públicamente con el “Congreso XX del PCUS” y el “Discurso secreto de Khrushchev”. Siendo la realidad tal, Peters sin embargo exagera la realidad soviética diaria, es decir, siendo al final de la URSS un problema real el personalismo, la burocracia y la corrupción favoritista que se arrastra desde Khrushchez, asigna a mediados de los 50’s y principios de los 60’s una sociedad que se asemeja más a las de los 90’s previa disolución del país.
Así mismo y asumiendo la existencia en un principio minoritaria y favorecida por estos reformistas burócratas, el autor afirma que “toda la economía funcionaba por favores”, quizás algo muy exagerado cuando la economía formal soviética era potente antes del 56, cayendo quizás en una crítica ‘liberal’ clásica muy vacía.

También critica, en la carrera cibernética, como las instituciones militares soviéticas “escondían” proyectos a la economía civil o al público, cuando era una dinámica de Guerra Fría que pasaba a ambos lados del Pacifico. Teniendo a la misma vez que confirmar que es el caso sovietico (ya reformista y por lo tanto NO comunista) es el que utiliza estos proyectos secretos para la mejora civil primero, cayendo con la crítica quizá de nuevo en aquello que él mismo pretende superar cuando sus propias investigaciones lo contradicen. (así es como he sentido la lectura de casi todo el libro)

Sin duda otro punto débil de este libro y del autor (quizá de donde sobrevienen, desde mi visión, todas las faltas ideológicas) es basarse tan vehementemente en los postulados liberales de Arendt. Sin motivo aparente asumo que es un referente del autor. Pero demuestra más aún sus faltas cuando en las “Conclusiones” intenta refutar a Marx malentendiendo tanto a Marx como a la relación de trabajo, sin nada más que añadir.

Así mismo hace un par de aportes muy interesantes de cómo los proyectos de redes soviéticas descentralizadas (Glushkov y cía.) son lo más avanzado de la época y siendo el aporte más cercano al moderno “cloud computing”, así como las teorías de computación paralela en un mismo ordenador (tecnología multicore)
Analiza también los diseños teóricos de las redes tanto soviética y americana. Como todas las ciencias se interconectan, por eso me parece justo y preciso el análisis de la red de Glushkov como un cuerpo vivo, siendo el cuerpo económico con sus administradores el cuerpo en sí, conectándose en la red como su sistema nervioso, y teniendo el centro de procesamiento central de la red en Moscú como su cerebro.
Mientras que el comparativo americano se diseña como un cerebro en sí mismo, sin un cuerpo al que dirigir o administrar

Otro punto importante son las disputas ideológicas, fruto de la decadencia ideológica que los reformistas permitieron, se ve reflejada en cómo aun en campos opuesto existe una disputa por aceptar la propuestas del OGAS (“red nacional” de la URSS) y la reforma liberal de Kosygin-Liberman. Al fin y al cabo si este libro tiene algo en comun es que refleja muy bien el caracter anticomunista de la mayoria de personajes de la epoca.
Es una historia de revisionistas trucando y eliminando comunistas y cómo mediante negativas, hicieron que el proyecto del socialismo tecnológico y el futuro comunista que Glushkov diseñó para el OGAS se convirtiera en una herramienta “neutra” para ayudar a procesar información de la economía por ordenador.

Este mismo anticomunismo y despotismo del capitalismo de estado que se implantó en la URSS en silencio en 1956, es el mismo que crea las contradicciones que narra la historia de Glushkov. Como teniendo el aprobado del Politburó, sin embargo, los ministerios funcionaban heterarquicamente y como el Ministerio de Defensa se negó a apoyar una causa apoyada por sus superiores, y como esto provocó un estancamiento del Proyecto OGAS.

Y justamente quitando todo el análisis de redes, información, sociedad y sistemas que dejo para la lectura, creo que el punto más importante del libro es solo uno, Glushkov. De este personaje, ideador y batallador del OGAS, y verdaderamente un genio, es de quien hace bandera el libro en realidad.
Historias de sinceridad en presupuestar el proyecto como el más caro de la historia soviética, de advertencias proféticas cumplidas de colapso económico ante la despreocupación tecnológica, así como otras “predicciones” tecnológicas generales que se cumplen hoy días. Nos deja claro una cosa y es que su proyecto, el OGAS acabó solo por burócratas que querían mantenerse en el poder y como el equipo entendió bien que toda reforma tecnológica es también una reforma política.
Un equipo convencido ideológicamente (comunista) que justo por eso se hizo crítico con el sistema que ahogaba injustamente su proyecto.

Resalto finalmente un par de “chanzas” que el autor plantea, primero, cuando el ministro de Administración Central de Estadística, en su decadencia y negación ante el proyecto OGAS y el avance tecnológico, este expone “que no hay nada que hacer”, que resalta con el principio del libro de Lenin “¿Qué hacer?.
Segundo, una broma sovietica donde Brezhnev le muestra a su madre lo bien que le va, le muestra su sitio en el Kremlin, su dacha, su villa en el Mar Negro, su limunsina, etc. Su madre replica “Todo muy bien, pero ¿qué harás cuando vuelvan los Bolcheviques?

[Sicofonia · Rating 5 out of 5]

How Not to Network a Nation is a fascinating history of the different attempts of several Russian visionaries of enhancing the planned economy by implementing cybernetics' techniques. This book is partly the result of extensive research conducted by Benjamin Peters as part of his own PhD. While other similar efforts such as ARPANET in USA, Minitel in France and Cybersyn in Chile have been widely documented in the English language, I'm not aware that other books have attempted the same when it comes to the Soviet efforts in the same field.

Therefore, this books fills a void and does it in a skillful way. Peters managed to keep enough depth and breadth without getting bogged down in technical jargon. A basic understanding of cybernetics should suffice for anybody to make sense of the text.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

[Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating overview of the failure to launch of the Soviet proto-internet, the All-State Automated System (OGAS). Doomed by the very political-economic bureaucracy it sought to reform, Peters' book is a unique take on technological roads not taken and alternative globalized futures. What might have been save for a pair of empty seats in a 1970 Central Committee meeting...

Peters is a bit repetitive throughout, and some of the early cybernetics discussion was lost on a layman like myself, but if you want an introduction to the Soviet internet that wasn't - and a comparison of market/emergent and hierarchical networking approaches, this really is the only game in town.

[Mehmet Şükrü · Rating 3 out of 5]

As the name suggests, the book elaborates on multiple efforts, most notably the OGAS project, on the "hows", "by whos" they are envisioned, what were their goals, what challenges these projects had faced, and how they all failed to come into fruition.

On one side, the book delves into a mostly unknown topic and sheds light on a critical gap in the overall History of the Internet. For which reasons researchers in USSR tried to build a nation-wide computer network, who tried what, what they have experienced. For these parts, hats off for the great effort and research put into the work.

On the other hand, the language of the book is pretty difficult, too academic for the average reader. It is a very "department of communication" thesis kind of a work (most likely from a thesis IMO). Often times the choice of words are very complex that does not add anything to the idea being relayed; too many background information feels like padding (especially the long discussion on cybernetics on Chapter 1) which decreases the pace considerably; too many repetition on several critical ideas the book proposes. These issues were very off-putting for me and cut my initial enthusiasm on the book considerably.

Also, while being too academic in the context of "department of communication", it is extremely light in the context of "department of computer engineering/telecommunications/electronical engineering" academics. As an computer networking specialist, if you are looking for what kind of theories, design principles, protocol ideas were there in these "Soviet ARPANET counterparts" you will not find a lot here. No mention about if the OGAS was designed based on a circuit-switching paradigm, a packet-switching paradigm, something different than these two, or the designers never thought about these items, nothing. Only one mention on the programming languages used. How the transistor technology, later miniaturization efforts affected these projects? There are also some military-use only networks discussed but also nothing on these networks either. As the conclusion chapter mentions, the book is mainly on "why" in USSR, there had been such an endeavor for an Internet-like computer network; but very little on the "how" it is thought to be put into place.

Overall, it has a very unique premise and focus but mainly aimed at department of communication academicians, focusing too much of social, bureaucratic, political challenges encountered which caused the demise of the aforementioned projects. Even then, it was not an interesting read in many places.

[J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book tells the story of the OGAS project (and adjacent ones), a Soviet attempt to build a computer network to manage the economy. The project was, as the author puts it, "too big to begin". It never had a real chance because the very people who would have had to implement it, bureaucrats whose power depended on the inefficiency of the system, would have been digging their own graves by supporting it.

That’s the main theme of the book: the USSR had several moments when it could have embraced cybernetics to push its economy forward, but at every turn the bureaucratic apparatus shut it down. Scientists had to downscale their projects, obscure their true aims, and essentially lie about what they were working on just to keep things alive. Instead of fostering innovation, this dynamic actively harmed any possibility of reform.

Some of the claims the bureaucrats made to justify their opposition were almost laughable. At one point they argued that "economic calculations by computer are ten times more expensive than done by hand". It shows how they shaped reality to defend their positions. As the world was changing, they made sure they didn’t.

Glushkov’s (a key figure) trational management system required top-down support, but no centralized authority would back it. Why? Because while the Soviet economy claimed to be centralized, in practice it wasn’t. It ran on favors, corruption, and informal networks, and the OGAS threatened those privileges. To implement cybernetic planning would have meant stripping away the very perks and private gains that made positions in the bureaucracy worthwhile.

The author’s conclusion is more philosophical, drawing on Arendt and "The Human Condition". I admit I didn’t fully follow this part, but the gist is that OGAS failed not just because of a clash between "state vs market", but because both state and market actors in the USSR pursued their own private interests at the expense of the public good. The system was set up to protect itself, not the people.

I really liked this book, though I think it would reward a second reading, especially the more theoretical ending. For now I gave it 4 stars, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I’d bump it to 5 after another go.

[Ryan Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

How Not to Network a Nation

12/2025.

In the beginning, there was more than one Internet. The one we all rely on today is a result of an open, standards-based, interoperable framework that proved to be a much better technology. But there were several other attempts, including Cybersyn in Chile, the French Minitel, and, it turns out, a Soviet data network for economic control (OGAS). Maybe our current Internet isn’t the end state either, as China certainly has a vision for how to use interconnected networks in powerfully different ways than the Internet most of us use today. And theirs is unlikely to be the last word, either, lest we fall for arrival bias.

So this is a story of a path not taken. Despite early wins, they couldn’t handle the possible changes that better automation of economic productivity could lead to. Egos and territorial ministers impeded progress.

What’s bizarre about this is that America harnessed non-capitalistic values to create a system that turned out to be far better at unleashing capitalism, and many other social forces, in the long run.

Indeed, at a technology level, the Soviet system seemed to presage massive decentralized remote computing (the cloud) well ahead of Americans. They recognized the value of a resilient interconnection network about the same time as Arpanet’s developers saw the same idea. Perhaps with better investment and less interference from the military, the Soviet network would have had a chance to give them a decisive advantage in the Cold War.

The book captures some of the magic that all hyper creative teams seem to employ: humor, subversion, and optimism. The OGAS team actually sounds like a bunch of crazy startup kids in Silicon Valley, but with less oversight from their financial benefactors. Alas, the fun was not long-lived. It looks like the heyday of Soviet network computing lasted about 5 years and was captured by bureaucratic forces that strangled it.

It must be noted how important the city of Kiev was to all of this: a “second city” away from the prying eyes of top political leadership, but with enough infrastructure and charm to attract serious researchers. Not unlike the Bay Area.

[David Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is another of the many books I've read that are not what I thought they'd be. As I've said in other reviews, this is not a fault of the book, but poor expectations of the reader (me).

I started programming computers sometime between the deployment of ARPANET and the Internet. For the last quarter century, I've worked to develop tools for financial planning. I also have a fair amount of interest in politics and economics. I've also studied Russian language, culture, and history. This book is primarily about financial planning and economics and politics. This is not a book describing any technical failures by Soviet technologists.

A few decades ago, a common refrain was that command economies (such as the Soviet economy) cannot succeed. I've never fully agreed with that sentiment. Today, I disagree with it completely. Both Walmart and Amazon have revenues today that exceed the GNP of the Soviet Union back in 1989. Both Walmart and Amazon plan their businesses in great detail and are great examples of large entities that plan successfully. One wonders how things might have turned out differently had the Soviets been able to develop tools similar to those in use by Walmart and Amazon today.

That failure of the Soviets to develop economic planning tools and networks is what this book is about. It's not technological failure, but faults within the Soviet system - self-preservation (e.g. the Soviet military or other ministries or individuals), corruption, cronyism, and so on.

The book isn't long (206pp of text), but I found it a bit dense. It took me a while to plow through it. But it's a topic I found quite interesting.

[Lee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fascinating topic that will have to wait for someone who knows how to write to discover it. The book has insights, but is sunk in a morass of jargon and purposeless that is too deep to rescue.

The topic of the Soviet Internyet, the Soviet internet that didn't, is fascinating, and often that wonder leapt out of this book. This is an amazing topic, and when these stories come out of the book, the story of the Soviet manager who sold his computer because it gave him answers he disagreed with, it can be incredibly funny and insightful.

But it was also often buried within turgid prose. Part of his problem is that Peters is writing a very academic. On page xiii, he says he is trying to write for both the general reader and the media studies scholar, this book is so dense with jargon that I, someone who works on media studies in a PhD. program, had trouble following him.

More the problem is the fact that Peters often wrote not knowing what problem he was addressing. The first chapter is a clusterfuck. It is entirely about the history of cybernetics, but he never defines what cybernetics is. Actually, he admits that many of the scientists working in cybernetics did not really have a firm idea of what it was...so how do you write a chapter on something that you cannot define and the people who you are writing about cannot define? For the reader, this was discombobulating.

These mistakes appear again and again. I finished it and am happy I did, but it was a slog.

[Dkettmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

(audiobook version)
Good book, wasn't what I thought it was, but still okay for me. I think it is maybe exceptional if you are looking for a textbook view of what was going on around the time that the Soviet Union came closest to making their own internet. It is a dry treatment of what is probably by its nature a dry subject.

If you are going in to it with a curiosity on what various sections of the communist government were up to during this time this will answer those questions. All others, I think this is probably not the book you are looking for. It was a 3 star(or maybe 2, my attention flagged a lot) to me the general reader, but giving 4 out of an understanding it is probably a very good book for its specific audience, and it's not the book's fault I didn't read the flap closer.

[Sumanth · Rating 4 out of 5]

How Not to Network a Nation is an A+ account of Internet history all through cold-war era Soviet Union - and how it never came to be. It's leading topic of discussion, OGAS - the Soviet counterpart of ARPANET - functions as an excellent case study on how network projects could have developed in societies that were not preoccupied with markets, democracies and personal liberties. Using Arendt's vocabulary of 'oikos' and 'polis' to discuss how the heterarchical but closed Soviet command economy felt threatened by the idea of a rigid algorithmic system, Benjamin Peters redefines the word 'technology' as the study of the crafts of social relations.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honestly don't know whether to give this three or four stars, but generally it's 3.5 stars. It's evident that Peters put a great deal of work into the manuscript, that he's aware of the problems of falling into the foolish old Cold War tropes. Unfortunately, the proof-reading for this volume is poor - which I don't hang on Peters's door - and I would have enjoyed more insight into how the ASU units functioned in practice (it was covered, but I was wondering whether these were ever updated, why they weren't interoperable [was it just because they were installed at different times and updating was never done, which I think was likely covered but I missed it]). Still, a very interesting book.

[Fernando Ramírez de Luis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a good account of the failure of the Soviet Union to implement its own version of the Internet. Whilst it provides an invaluable set of information about each initiative and the reasons of its demise, the theoretical framework upon which the analysis is based relies too much on the "homo economicus", selfish individual, with sprinkles of Anthony Downs and Hannah Arendt. It is nevertheless a work worth reading.

[Matthew Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had found out about this book after reading Francis Spufford's Red Plenty, where the OGAS project is talked about in some detail.

The book gets the job done, but it is dry and at times disorganized in structure and rabbit trails. If you want to know everything about the Soviet attempts at an Internet though I would still recommend it.

[Gordon Goodwin · Rating 2 out of 5]

A good history of cybernetics and the failed computer system in the USSR, but Peters has a crude conception of the Soviet economy/politics that hasn't advanced far past cold war era historiography. Ends strange, and there are many points that make it feel like he's just writing for the sake of making the book long.

[Marine Lim · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this interesting account of a forgotten part of history, Peters disproves the myth of a Soviet Union lagging behind technologically and makes us wonder what could have been, if human interest had not gotten in the way

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

Usually I'm fine with dense academic books, but the lack of any kind of organizing narrative made this book unreadable. The facts seem sound, but it feels like the chapters don't go anywhere. I look back on a page I read and wonder what I even learned. Sorry, had to DNF this one

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating read.