Project SPHINX – When the USSR tried to change the computer (2019)(inexhibit.com)
inexhibit.com
Project SPHINX – When the USSR tried to change the computer (2019)
https://www.inexhibit.com/case-studies/project-sphinx-when-the-ussr-tried-to-change-the-computer/
142 comments
I don't think a balanced-ternary Setun was ever built in hardware. It was emulated on a base-4 machine according to this contemporaneous RAND report by Willis Ware [1]
The Setun creator N.P. Brousentsov made a lot of dubious claims, including that Setup "worked correctly at once without even debugging" [2].
Balanced ternary was never competitive in transistors. It was hypothesized to be more efficient for vacuum-tube based ring counters, and even that was "only approximately valid, and the choice of 2 as a radix is frequently justified on more complete analysis" [3].
The Setun creator N.P. Brousentsov made a lot of dubious claims, including that Setup "worked correctly at once without even debugging" [2].
Balanced ternary was never competitive in transistors. It was hypothesized to be more efficient for vacuum-tube based ring counters, and even that was "only approximately valid, and the choice of 2 as a radix is frequently justified on more complete analysis" [3].
[1] https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_memoranda/RM2541.html
[2] https://www.computer-museum.ru/english/setun.htm
[3] http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/era/High_Speed_Computing_Devices_1950.pdf>"Since a base-3 electronic technique is not available, they decided to construct a base-4 machine and to utilize only 3 of the 4 possible states. The unused fourth state in each case is available for some form of checking."
Thanks - that clears some things up. It also appears that DSSP (Soviet trinary Forth, yes there was such a thing), postdates Forth, was based on Forth, and was not an independent discovery as it is sometimes represented. http://www.euroforth.org/ef00/lyakina00.pdf
Thanks - that clears some things up. It also appears that DSSP (Soviet trinary Forth, yes there was such a thing), postdates Forth, was based on Forth, and was not an independent discovery as it is sometimes represented. http://www.euroforth.org/ef00/lyakina00.pdf
Yeah. Balanced ternary clearly makes sense if you were getting regeneration, amplification, memory, and inversion from your flip-flops and doing all your combinational logic with diodes, which was a common approach at the time and probably the right choice with tubes (the famous LGP-30 and LGP-21 worked this way) and maybe with ferrite logic too. A three-state "flip-flop" isn't really just a three-state ring counter, any more than a two-state flip-flop is just a two-state ring counter, although that's definitely one way to configure it.
Ware definitely is not claiming that they didn't build the Setun in hardware, nor that they emulated it on a base-4 machine, only that the circuit elements they used were capable of four states. Brousentsov's account certainly says they built it. Ware is careful to disclaim, "Among other things, the difficulty of communicating across a language barrier introduces uncertainties in the information."
As for the debugging, it's entirely plausible to me that they debugged the logic equations well enough on paper before building the computer, and designed it conservatively enough (operating 1 MHz transistors at 200 kHz, for example), that they didn't have to correct any design defects after it was built. Of course, this would have been very likely if they had simulated it on another machine first, as you seemed to be saying, but I don't think they had one available.
Brousentsov's other claims (that a balanced-ternary machine doesn't have an unsigned type or require unsigned comparisons, that rounding is achieved simply by truncation, that people common reason informally with three-valued logic, and that programming is easier in ternary) seem either uncontroversially true to me or subjective; which ones did you think were dubious?
The potential economy of ternary, which is marginal to begin with (5.7% greater density in one-hot circuits like those mentioned), does of course disappear when your "trits" are represented as pairs of bits, as in the realization that Ware saw. (There's a diagram of a ternary Setun shift-register stage on p. 128 (141/205) of Ware's report, figure 53.) But it seems from Brousentsov's account that they were able to eventually build some ternary gates as well; the machine wasn't ready for "official testing" until the year after Ware's report. Then they manufactured 50 units in total over the next five years, which could of course have incorporated hardware simplification. Surely they all had to use binary core memory, though, which means the 2916-trit RAM (worth about 4621.8 bits) would have been 26% larger if it had been configured as 5832 bits instead.
Incidentally, Ware's Appendix III starting on p. 171 (184/205) is a relatively in-depth look at the square-loop ferrite logic ("switching") cores that were a less popular alternative to transistors and tubes at the time, the core of the ferrite/diode systems that remained popular in the USSR until the end of the 01960s. They finally lost out because they couldn't scale to the high densities, low powers, or high speeds that transistors could (even the Russians had 400 MHz transistors at the time of Ware's report), and their assembly was much less amenable to automation, putting them at an even greater disadvantage in the US. They did have the merit of being considerably more robust than transistors.
Thank you very much for bringing these delightful documents to my attention!
Ware definitely is not claiming that they didn't build the Setun in hardware, nor that they emulated it on a base-4 machine, only that the circuit elements they used were capable of four states. Brousentsov's account certainly says they built it. Ware is careful to disclaim, "Among other things, the difficulty of communicating across a language barrier introduces uncertainties in the information."
As for the debugging, it's entirely plausible to me that they debugged the logic equations well enough on paper before building the computer, and designed it conservatively enough (operating 1 MHz transistors at 200 kHz, for example), that they didn't have to correct any design defects after it was built. Of course, this would have been very likely if they had simulated it on another machine first, as you seemed to be saying, but I don't think they had one available.
Brousentsov's other claims (that a balanced-ternary machine doesn't have an unsigned type or require unsigned comparisons, that rounding is achieved simply by truncation, that people common reason informally with three-valued logic, and that programming is easier in ternary) seem either uncontroversially true to me or subjective; which ones did you think were dubious?
The potential economy of ternary, which is marginal to begin with (5.7% greater density in one-hot circuits like those mentioned), does of course disappear when your "trits" are represented as pairs of bits, as in the realization that Ware saw. (There's a diagram of a ternary Setun shift-register stage on p. 128 (141/205) of Ware's report, figure 53.) But it seems from Brousentsov's account that they were able to eventually build some ternary gates as well; the machine wasn't ready for "official testing" until the year after Ware's report. Then they manufactured 50 units in total over the next five years, which could of course have incorporated hardware simplification. Surely they all had to use binary core memory, though, which means the 2916-trit RAM (worth about 4621.8 bits) would have been 26% larger if it had been configured as 5832 bits instead.
Incidentally, Ware's Appendix III starting on p. 171 (184/205) is a relatively in-depth look at the square-loop ferrite logic ("switching") cores that were a less popular alternative to transistors and tubes at the time, the core of the ferrite/diode systems that remained popular in the USSR until the end of the 01960s. They finally lost out because they couldn't scale to the high densities, low powers, or high speeds that transistors could (even the Russians had 400 MHz transistors at the time of Ware's report), and their assembly was much less amenable to automation, putting them at an even greater disadvantage in the US. They did have the merit of being considerably more robust than transistors.
Thank you very much for bringing these delightful documents to my attention!
I love this design. Reminds me of the Esslinger's desk-integrated Snow White Mac, with a touch of the Jonathan's modular design, with a tiny bit of Bibdesign's geometric purity.
Maybe we can take some inspiration on the design utopias of the past.
Maybe we can take some inspiration on the design utopias of the past.
I like it too, enough that I'm thinking about whether I could make a pair of electrostats that small.
The keyboard suggests some kind of awesome galaxy brain user experience like the Space Cadet keyboard, but would probably be more like operating a phone switchboard.
The keyboard suggests some kind of awesome galaxy brain user experience like the Space Cadet keyboard, but would probably be more like operating a phone switchboard.
Sadly, the article and anything else I can find with cursory google search leaves out an real specs or capabilities.
The article just talks about design and only briefly mentions capabilities.
The Soviets did have computers and did have a semiconductor industry. It was a bit behind the west but not terribly so. For example the Intel 8080 was launched in 1974 and The Soviets were able to fab clones starting in 1979.
The article just talks about design and only briefly mentions capabilities.
The Soviets did have computers and did have a semiconductor industry. It was a bit behind the west but not terribly so. For example the Intel 8080 was launched in 1974 and The Soviets were able to fab clones starting in 1979.
Five years was an eternity back then. Motorola launched the 68000 (32 bit registers and 16 bit data bus) in 1979. The Intel 8086 was a year old. The first-generation Apple II, Commodore PET, and Radio Shack TRS-80 were two years old.
It was and it wasn't. On the consumer level it wasn't that big of a deal. 8bit 8080, Z80 and 6502 based machines were being sold right up to the end of the 80's. Even though 16 and then 32bit cpus were introduced surprisingly early. 386's and equivalents were considered high end in 1990-91.
That had more to do with cost than it did the advance of tech. But it did mean that competitors had a chance to catch up and get into the market before they were blown away.
In the case of professional workstations and up, midrange, big iron etc the difference was felt far more. This was especially true in military tech where NATO forces we able to become fully digital sooner than the Warsaw pact.
That had more to do with cost than it did the advance of tech. But it did mean that competitors had a chance to catch up and get into the market before they were blown away.
In the case of professional workstations and up, midrange, big iron etc the difference was felt far more. This was especially true in military tech where NATO forces we able to become fully digital sooner than the Warsaw pact.
The 386 was still kind of expensive in 1990-1991 but it was not particularly high end. The high end was the 486, introduced in 1989. The 386 had gone into volume production in 1986, so in 1991 it was five years old. I wouldn't even see a 1986-era Compaq 386 until 1988, when it was already kind of dreary next to a Mac II. By 1991 non-enthusiasts in the USA who "needed a computer" would buy a 386SX with Windows 3.1.
Competing with Apple and "Wintel" - there wasn't much. Enthusiast computers like the Atari ST and Commmodore Amiga and, in the UK, the Archimedes, targeted a sort of odd market of folks who would really have liked a nice workstation or big box Mac but couldn't afford one. They didn't sell many. There really wasn't anybody who "caught up" by introducing an 8-bit after the early eighties - maybe Amstrad in Europe? They pivoted to PC clones, didn't they?
Competing with Apple and "Wintel" - there wasn't much. Enthusiast computers like the Atari ST and Commmodore Amiga and, in the UK, the Archimedes, targeted a sort of odd market of folks who would really have liked a nice workstation or big box Mac but couldn't afford one. They didn't sell many. There really wasn't anybody who "caught up" by introducing an 8-bit after the early eighties - maybe Amstrad in Europe? They pivoted to PC clones, didn't they?
I don't think you give the Amiga in particular enough credit. It wasn't really sold as a workstation, in particular the 500. It was sold for gaming and home use and was way better at that than anything else of the day. Including Mac and PC. At least in the Netherlands they were wildly popular among home users and not oddball at all. I bought one even though I had a PC because it was so much better for games.
It also had a pre-emptive multitasking OS in ROM which other platforms got only many years later. Like the Mac I'm the early 2000s.
It also had a pre-emptive multitasking OS in ROM which other platforms got only many years later. Like the Mac I'm the early 2000s.
I'll just leave it here for anyone interested in the topic.
https://translate.yandex.ru/translate?url=https%3A%2F%2Fhabr...
Neat industrial design, but the keyboard looks absolutely awful to type on. I realize it probably never got made, but still.
Minor nitpick:
"This picture of a parade in Berlin in 1987 shows one of the very few original PCs ever produced in a Socialist State, the VEB Robotron PC 1715 manufactured in East Germany"
The PC1715 was actually a run-of-the-mill CP/M compatible office computer and fairly common (together with the higher end IBM PC compatible EC 1834: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/EC_1834).
For some actually 'original' computers, check out the KC85/2../4 computers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KC_85) and the extremely rare "Mansfeld MPC": https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansfeld_MPC
Nothing "revolutionary" of course, but also not straight clones of Western designs (like the PC 1715 or EC 1834).
"This picture of a parade in Berlin in 1987 shows one of the very few original PCs ever produced in a Socialist State, the VEB Robotron PC 1715 manufactured in East Germany"
The PC1715 was actually a run-of-the-mill CP/M compatible office computer and fairly common (together with the higher end IBM PC compatible EC 1834: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/EC_1834).
For some actually 'original' computers, check out the KC85/2../4 computers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KC_85) and the extremely rare "Mansfeld MPC": https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansfeld_MPC
Nothing "revolutionary" of course, but also not straight clones of Western designs (like the PC 1715 or EC 1834).
Right - and to get an idea of how behind the times they were, in the west CP/M office computers had an extinction level event occur in 1981 that some people might remember. The KC models were introduced in 1984, a year that saw the introduction of another notable personal computer system.
Yes of course the GDR electronics industry was behind the US, but so were most Western countries.
At the beginning of the 70s, Eastern Germany didn't have chip manufacturing capabilities at all, and at the end of the decade it was able to manufacture Z80 clones along with all other chips needed to build Z80-based computers, and two years later 16-bit CPUs (the Z8000 clone U8000). What CPUs did (for instance) Western Germany build at that time? ;)
At the beginning of the 70s, Eastern Germany didn't have chip manufacturing capabilities at all, and at the end of the decade it was able to manufacture Z80 clones along with all other chips needed to build Z80-based computers, and two years later 16-bit CPUs (the Z8000 clone U8000). What CPUs did (for instance) Western Germany build at that time? ;)
Compare to Japan, then.
Japan had a much better starting position: it was built up by the USA after WW2 similar to the Western European countries, while Eastern Germany was looted by the Soviet Union. Japan had access to the free market, while Eastern Germany had to deal with trade restrictions (especially for "sensitive" technology like computers), and finally Japan had a nearly 10x bigger population than Eastern Germany.
Yeah, looting has consequences.
The UK did OK - Acorn launched the Archimedes in 1987 (without a parade) - but the rest of Western Europe was never really a personal computer or IC design powerhouse either. Commodore did some assembly in Germany, and I remember being appalled by the large display of obviously horrible Thomson home computers at a department store in Germany in the mid-eighties. The store's buyer must have been out of his or her mind to stock them, or just entranced by the light pen, but apparently they were big in France.
The UK did OK - Acorn launched the Archimedes in 1987 (without a parade) - but the rest of Western Europe was never really a personal computer or IC design powerhouse either. Commodore did some assembly in Germany, and I remember being appalled by the large display of obviously horrible Thomson home computers at a department store in Germany in the mid-eighties. The store's buyer must have been out of his or her mind to stock them, or just entranced by the light pen, but apparently they were big in France.
> while Eastern Germany was looted by the Soviet Union
This.
All manufacturing capability of USSR was based on equipment looted from Eastern Germany.
This.
All manufacturing capability of USSR was based on equipment looted from Eastern Germany.
The USSR massively outproduced all of the Reich, let alone Germany, much less East Germany.
What they did get from East Germany was a lot of R&D, and ok terms of productivity per capita yes there was some "looting".
What they did get from East Germany was a lot of R&D, and ok terms of productivity per capita yes there was some "looting".
I had an answer to you but I deleted it, your claim is just too ridiculous.
If "all" of USSR capacity were stolen from the East Germany, how did USSR managed to produce all the tanks and planes which caused East Germany to start its sad communist existence?
If "all" of USSR capacity were stolen from the East Germany, how did USSR managed to produce all the tanks and planes which caused East Germany to start its sad communist existence?
It's lunchtime so I googled - Siemens did have a collaboration with Intel and built processors at least through the 286 in Europe - I found a picture of one marked "Austria". This would have been completely unremarkable at the time, nothing to stake national pride on. Given the cultural and business style differences between Intel and Siemens, that process could have possibly been harder than ripping off the masks and pirating the chip! As an aside in that vein, it looks like Intel and Siemens caught a real cold working together on the project that became the i960. One of the pitfalls of advanced development is you can go wrong...
Those who are interested in the esoteric computers of the USSR might be interested in the Setun 70. [0][1]
[0](pdf) https://hal.inria.fr/hal-01568401/document
[1] http://ternary.3neko.ru/setun70.html
[0](pdf) https://hal.inria.fr/hal-01568401/document
[1] http://ternary.3neko.ru/setun70.html
Off topic, but, the USSR had a brutal education system (as in "good"), and lots of stellar talent. It was too poor to have the proper tools to widely cultivate that talent. At least the world got Tetris out of it.
Yes, the only thing the USSR created was Tetris. /s
Alright. Also - great combat flight simulators and an army of world-class black hat hackers. Few people care about either.
[deleted]
With the right outlook, it was the single most profitable piece of luck one could have to balance all the other not so great things from communism.
Luck had a lot to do with it. Just like Bill Gates was stuffed into an ultra-privileged boarding school that happened to have a computer, exposing him to an opportunity, Alexey Pajitnov was lucky enough to be born in Moscow, where he went to the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Tetris (I believe) was developed on the Academy's computers. Communism had nothing to do with it - but you had to win the Birth Lottery even in a bigger way.
Slight correction.
Soviet Academy of Sciences is not an educational institution, nor it is limited to those who were born in Moscow.
A lot of university students in Moscow, Kyiv, St. Petersburg or any bigger Soviet city weren't actually born there. If you were from another city the university will give you dorm room if you pass the entry exams.
In case of Pajitnov luck is more about getting a job at Academy of Sciences, but probably it has something to do with his talents.
A lot of university students in Moscow, Kyiv, St. Petersburg or any bigger Soviet city weren't actually born there. If you were from another city the university will give you dorm room if you pass the entry exams.
In case of Pajitnov luck is more about getting a job at Academy of Sciences, but probably it has something to do with his talents.
Fair point, but let's not forget the USSR was not a very mobile society. You didn't just "move" from your government-allocated apartment, if you even had one. Where you were born greatly contributed to your trajectory, especially if it was Moscow.
Education-wise, YES, the USSR was a meritocracy, way more so than the United States. My father was born in a God-forsaken Ukrainian village, and he studied in then Leningrad.
After you graduate, of course, it's different. It requires significant maneuvering in the political system and ample butt-licking to get anywhere serious.
Education-wise, YES, the USSR was a meritocracy, way more so than the United States. My father was born in a God-forsaken Ukrainian village, and he studied in then Leningrad.
After you graduate, of course, it's different. It requires significant maneuvering in the political system and ample butt-licking to get anywhere serious.
> The system was intended to replace all the technological devices in a house, computers, telephone, television, radio, audio system, and so on.
Wow, amazing vision considering the early tech.
I love the design too. I had no idea that size flat panels were a thing back then.
Wow, amazing vision considering the early tech.
I love the design too. I had no idea that size flat panels were a thing back then.
Holy Carp, those things look so cool. Like from a vintage sci-fi film.
What are the white spheres in the picture? They look like speakers, but the article only mentions the flat speakers. Soviet disco balls?
The article mentions does mention them (emphasis mine):
> A large flat-panel display and TV with *two spherical satellite loudspeakers*, for home entertainment, and video-conference.
> A large flat-panel display and TV with *two spherical satellite loudspeakers*, for home entertainment, and video-conference.
My bad, I searched the article for "sphere" to double check I didn't miss anything. Thank you.
Even the original photos have plastic that's yellowed. UV blocking compounds: underrated inventions!
Everyone here saying that the soviets didn't/couldn't build computers, there's literally a wikipedia list of Soviet-manufactured computers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Soviet_computer_system...), including this PDP-11 microcomputer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVK
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVK
Yes, there were computer builders all over eastern europe, then it was decided cybernetics is "bourgeois pseudoscience" and most of them emigrated. They usually ended up in California.
That was in the 1950s when cybernetics was condemned. At the time computers hardly existed. Afterwords, the USSR embraced cybernetics -- the former Institute of Cybernetics in Soviet Estonia (founded in 1960) is why that country is a star in computing among Eastern European countries to this day.
This comment is entirely misguided. I recommend at least reading Wikipedia before commenting. [0]
Cybernetics has little to do with computing. It's just a subset of control theory applied to non-technical areas. In particular, politics - which of course was considered by Stalin/the party as an attack on their authority. So they declared cybernetics as bourgeois pseudoscience, after Wiener's book got popular.
Communist party's condemnation of cybernetics, which lasted whopping 4-5 years in 50s, got absolutely nothing to do with either computers, computer science, electronics, or control theory as an engineering discipline. In fact it had zero effect on anything, it was simply a moral panic in the media. Nobody "emigrated to California" (how on Earth?..) as a result of that propaganda stunt, in particular because they couldn't. Actually, USSR developed their native computers in that period and after that. It was long before they decided to copy IBM.
I have no idea why cybernetics in USSR became such a meme.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics_in_the_Soviet_Unio...
Cybernetics has little to do with computing. It's just a subset of control theory applied to non-technical areas. In particular, politics - which of course was considered by Stalin/the party as an attack on their authority. So they declared cybernetics as bourgeois pseudoscience, after Wiener's book got popular.
Communist party's condemnation of cybernetics, which lasted whopping 4-5 years in 50s, got absolutely nothing to do with either computers, computer science, electronics, or control theory as an engineering discipline. In fact it had zero effect on anything, it was simply a moral panic in the media. Nobody "emigrated to California" (how on Earth?..) as a result of that propaganda stunt, in particular because they couldn't. Actually, USSR developed their native computers in that period and after that. It was long before they decided to copy IBM.
I have no idea why cybernetics in USSR became such a meme.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics_in_the_Soviet_Unio...
Might be that the cybernetics was only a meme (even so it certainly was misapplied to computers by communists, there is plenty of evidence), but for example in the case of Prof. Svoboda the environment was so problematic and for so long time that it led to emigration.
https://www.root.cz/clanky/prichod-hackeru-pribeh-profesora-... https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonín_Svoboda
https://www.root.cz/clanky/prichod-hackeru-pribeh-profesora-... https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonín_Svoboda
It's a shame things ended up this way. Were it not for the May 1947 crises, we might have avoided the Cold War entirely (though perhaps not, as the Spanish Civil War shows the USSR wasn't great at letting allies stay independent, and Operation Sunrise on the US side was already treating the USSR as hostile).
France and Italy could have had moderate communist governments, Yugoslavia would have had closer allies against the more authoritarian USSR. Czechoslovakia and Hungary could have remained more independent, etc. - no Vietnam war, no Prague Spring clampdown, no Cuban missile crisis.
May 1947 crises - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_1947_crises
Operation Sunrise - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sunrise_(World_War_I...
France and Italy could have had moderate communist governments, Yugoslavia would have had closer allies against the more authoritarian USSR. Czechoslovakia and Hungary could have remained more independent, etc. - no Vietnam war, no Prague Spring clampdown, no Cuban missile crisis.
May 1947 crises - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_1947_crises
Operation Sunrise - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sunrise_(World_War_I...
> as the Spanish Civil War shows the USSR wasn't great at letting allies stay independent
Same is true for the US. Allied countries whose leaders take decisions that run contra to what we want tend(ed) to be regime-changed and those leaders killed.
Same is true for the US. Allied countries whose leaders take decisions that run contra to what we want tend(ed) to be regime-changed and those leaders killed.
> that run _contra_ to what we want
I CIA what you did there.
I CIA what you did there.
> France and Italy could have had moderate communist governments,
The only way any industrialized nation adopts a communist regime is with Red Army tanks. There is a reason why no communist government has succeeded in any industrialized nation -- and it's not for lack of trying. But you just can't convert a liberal advanced economy into an authoritarian command economy without massive repression. There are too many people who own property and land who won't agree to be dispossessed.
There has never been any moderate or mild communist regime that didn't start out as a repressive regime and just mellowed out as successive generations stopped believing in it.
But to make that initial mass confiscation of property you need true believers and mass democide as class enemies are liquidated.
The only way any industrialized nation adopts a communist regime is with Red Army tanks. There is a reason why no communist government has succeeded in any industrialized nation -- and it's not for lack of trying. But you just can't convert a liberal advanced economy into an authoritarian command economy without massive repression. There are too many people who own property and land who won't agree to be dispossessed.
There has never been any moderate or mild communist regime that didn't start out as a repressive regime and just mellowed out as successive generations stopped believing in it.
But to make that initial mass confiscation of property you need true believers and mass democide as class enemies are liquidated.
Cuba is going on 4 generations now, and so is North Korea. It depends how you define a generation, though, I guess.
With Cuba, it's more about how you define communism. China has successfully transitioned into a mostly capitalist economy while keeping the one party control.
Cuba has also liberalized their economy but is trying to keep one party in control. Cuba recognized private property in 2018, but even before that time there was a huge black market that was tolerated because it provided necessary goods and services.
Cuba has also liberalized their economy but is trying to keep one party in control. Cuba recognized private property in 2018, but even before that time there was a huge black market that was tolerated because it provided necessary goods and services.
The USSR liberalized their economy in 1919 and recognize private property exactly the same way as Cuba (and even China) does now.
" China has successfully transitioned into a mostly capitalist economy while keeping the one party control."
Well, so have we. I'm being 70% sarcastic.
Well, so have we. I'm being 70% sarcastic.
Can't really argue
North Korea is a straightforward feudal monarchy decorated with communist trimmings.
While the USSR was effectively a dictatorship it had no mechanism for inherited leadership. It was actually more like Imperial Rome, with the nominally elected leader acting as Emperor until death, in charge of a semi-loyal but fractious Senate (Politburo).
Putin reinvented this recently, but without the friction.
The omens strongly imply that Trump would have followed the same playbook if he'd won the last election.
While the USSR was effectively a dictatorship it had no mechanism for inherited leadership. It was actually more like Imperial Rome, with the nominally elected leader acting as Emperor until death, in charge of a semi-loyal but fractious Senate (Politburo).
Putin reinvented this recently, but without the friction.
The omens strongly imply that Trump would have followed the same playbook if he'd won the last election.
USSR was something else, more akin to oligarchic theocracies: a state where the means of production are owned collectively by the ruling elites. So party functionaries enjoyed a significantly better standard of living - the higher in the hierarchy, the better - but all of that was strictly conditional on being in the party (and helping maintain that state of affairs).
In comparison, Imperial Rome had full-fledged private property, and it was entirely possible to be rich outside of politics, or for a politician to retire and still make use of all the capital accumulated by their application of power.
(One could also reasonably argue that this is why USSR was ultimately dismantled from the inside by the very bureacrats who ruled it: they all wanted to secure their slice of the pie.)
In comparison, Imperial Rome had full-fledged private property, and it was entirely possible to be rich outside of politics, or for a politician to retire and still make use of all the capital accumulated by their application of power.
(One could also reasonably argue that this is why USSR was ultimately dismantled from the inside by the very bureacrats who ruled it: they all wanted to secure their slice of the pie.)
NK is Japanese Fascism in practice with Communist propaganda as a showoff to "calm" China and make it their ally.
> There has never been any moderate or mild communist regime that didn't start out as a repressive regime and just mellowed out as successive generations stopped believing in it.
As a side-note, on the other hand, there have been plenty of mild communist municipalities that worked pretty well (and some of them still do) in Western Europe, or in Israël, for instance.
As a side-note, on the other hand, there have been plenty of mild communist municipalities that worked pretty well (and some of them still do) in Western Europe, or in Israël, for instance.
> As a side-note, on the other hand, there have been plenty of mild communist municipalities that worked pretty well (and some of them still do) in Western Europe, or in Israël, for instance.
I don't think so. So what makes this work for, say, a Kibbutz, is that it's a voluntary association of people donating some wealth, and they can also leave the Kibbutz when they want and new people can come in whenever they want.
Thus the individual Kibbutzniks are almost all capitalists, as they continue to have bank accounts, brokerage accounts, pension funds, land holdings, etc on areas outside the Kibbutz.
Rather the Kibbutz is like a big coop. It's one business run cooperatively for the staff, and it's like a summer camp for the visitors. But each individual person still has their own bank account, and that bank account consists of private ownership claims on productive capital outside the Kibbutz.
But in a communist economy, you would not be able to privately own capital. The "true" communist Kibbutz would have its own currency, its own bank, and you would need to sell all your assets and donate them to the Kibbutz, holding accounts only in the Kibbutz bank that were backed only by the business in the Kibbutz. Then you couldn't spend the day picking oranges but receive dividends from Walmart at the same time.
BTW, in many countries there are coops of all sorts. Housing coops, business coops, agricultural coops. Capitalism, as a system, is not about banning corporate (e.g. group) ownership according to some agreed-upon bylaws. But communism is about banning private ownership. So capitalist societies have wide varieties of ownership structures.
I don't think so. So what makes this work for, say, a Kibbutz, is that it's a voluntary association of people donating some wealth, and they can also leave the Kibbutz when they want and new people can come in whenever they want.
Thus the individual Kibbutzniks are almost all capitalists, as they continue to have bank accounts, brokerage accounts, pension funds, land holdings, etc on areas outside the Kibbutz.
Rather the Kibbutz is like a big coop. It's one business run cooperatively for the staff, and it's like a summer camp for the visitors. But each individual person still has their own bank account, and that bank account consists of private ownership claims on productive capital outside the Kibbutz.
But in a communist economy, you would not be able to privately own capital. The "true" communist Kibbutz would have its own currency, its own bank, and you would need to sell all your assets and donate them to the Kibbutz, holding accounts only in the Kibbutz bank that were backed only by the business in the Kibbutz. Then you couldn't spend the day picking oranges but receive dividends from Walmart at the same time.
BTW, in many countries there are coops of all sorts. Housing coops, business coops, agricultural coops. Capitalism, as a system, is not about banning corporate (e.g. group) ownership according to some agreed-upon bylaws. But communism is about banning private ownership. So capitalist societies have wide varieties of ownership structures.
There are different flavors. You're broadly correct that communism (and, in general, actual socialism, as opposed to social democracy that is often mislabelled as socialism) is opposed to private ownership of the means of production - but it doesn't necessarily translate to banning them. Authoritarian varieties generally advocate for that. Libertarian ones are more likely to say that abstract private property, on the contrary, is what requires state enforcement by violence (e.g. evicting squatters) - and thus, if you get rid of that enforcement, you get rid of private property as such, leaving only personal property / right-of-use in place.
(Anarchists would also add that protecting property rights by violence is one of the primary functions of any state.)
(Anarchists would also add that protecting property rights by violence is one of the primary functions of any state.)
> Libertarian ones are more likely to say that abstract private property, on the contrary, is what requires state enforcement by violence (e.g. evicting squatters) - and thus, if you get rid of that enforcement, you get rid of private property as such, leaving only personal property / right-of-use in place.
Right. That is basically how primitive societies (not meant as a value judgement) worked. You could own whatever you could physically defend, or convince your allies to help you defend.
Unfortunately that means that political considerations will decide who owns what, at which point a hierarchical group will form, and it will be well organized, and it will conquer the decentralized society of individuals and small communities. So you are left with the eternal problems of decentralized societies, which is that they are just weaker than centralized societies.
So then you say, we will have a strong hierarchy, but the sole purpose of the hierarchy is to guarantee our values, and now you are back in the authoritarian camp, and very quickly the party that runs the society will be more interested in domination than preserving whatever founding values they had before.
There is just a big gap between what is intellectually appealing, and what is stable and defendable in a hostile world.
Right. That is basically how primitive societies (not meant as a value judgement) worked. You could own whatever you could physically defend, or convince your allies to help you defend.
Unfortunately that means that political considerations will decide who owns what, at which point a hierarchical group will form, and it will be well organized, and it will conquer the decentralized society of individuals and small communities. So you are left with the eternal problems of decentralized societies, which is that they are just weaker than centralized societies.
So then you say, we will have a strong hierarchy, but the sole purpose of the hierarchy is to guarantee our values, and now you are back in the authoritarian camp, and very quickly the party that runs the society will be more interested in domination than preserving whatever founding values they had before.
There is just a big gap between what is intellectually appealing, and what is stable and defendable in a hostile world.
Not quite. We're not talking about a free-for-all here, in a sense that if you can forcibly take it, it's yours. We're talking about what kinds of property are recognized (and enforced) above that by society at large. Abstract property rights, where "X owns Y" is true if there's a central registry that says so, are one thing. Property rights based on use and occupation are another - but they still have to be enforced by the society to be effective. And this all is actually orthogonal to whether the society has centralized governance or not - you could have a strong central government that still refuses to recognize & enforce some property rights.
As for defense against organized authoritarians in general - the middle ground is a decentralized federation, where (relatively) small communities run their own day-to-day affairs, but band up together for defense. Bookchin's libertarian municipalism is an example of that kind of framework, and Rojava is trying to build something like it. They seem to have fared quite well in combat against their more authoritarian opponents who are on a similar technological level (mostly ISIL and other Islamist groups, and very occasionally, Assad's forces). Not so much against Turkey, but the disparity in resources there is extreme.
As for defense against organized authoritarians in general - the middle ground is a decentralized federation, where (relatively) small communities run their own day-to-day affairs, but band up together for defense. Bookchin's libertarian municipalism is an example of that kind of framework, and Rojava is trying to build something like it. They seem to have fared quite well in combat against their more authoritarian opponents who are on a similar technological level (mostly ISIL and other Islamist groups, and very occasionally, Assad's forces). Not so much against Turkey, but the disparity in resources there is extreme.
Well, I have no sympathies to communism but the US also has not let any communist country alone without meddling in its affairs. So it’s hard to assess the true outcome, for better or worse.
It’s like running a performance test while constantly unplugging some instances or knocking out power to the data center. The results are tainted.
It’s like running a performance test while constantly unplugging some instances or knocking out power to the data center. The results are tainted.
The Soviet bloc was sufficiently large that if communism was even moderately functional it would have succeeded even if the US had managed to stop it from trading from any country outside its bloc.
The destruction wrought by any kind of communist policy is so devastating as to make its true effect obvious. This is unlike social democratic policies which are a weaker economic poison and thus can cause decades of stagnation/deindustrialization without total collapse.
The destruction wrought by any kind of communist policy is so devastating as to make its true effect obvious. This is unlike social democratic policies which are a weaker economic poison and thus can cause decades of stagnation/deindustrialization without total collapse.
That's pretty ridiculous on its face. It was impossible for the communist bloc to outproduce the rest of the world by its size alone.
Without being able to outproduce rivals, all it takes are a few arms races and your economy rots, no matter the system.
The destruction wrought by "any kind of communist policy" still led to outcomes that were above the global average. Yes, they eventually lost, but they were very much in the same order of magnitude as the rest of the world, and were slowly catching up until political factors caused destruction, which was arguably the greatest weakness from a competitive point of view.
Economic policies that are immediately devastating don't cause 60 years of frenetic existential anxiety. If communism was as obviously devastating economically, the USA wouldn't have spent so much time worrying about losing its economic dominance.
As far as attributing deindustrialization to social democratic, all I can say is that this is laughable. Exporting your capital to countries where the wage share will be lower is the cause of deindustrialization, and it's simple economics. You need government policy in the form of direct or indirect capital controls to prevent that from happening.
Without being able to outproduce rivals, all it takes are a few arms races and your economy rots, no matter the system.
The destruction wrought by "any kind of communist policy" still led to outcomes that were above the global average. Yes, they eventually lost, but they were very much in the same order of magnitude as the rest of the world, and were slowly catching up until political factors caused destruction, which was arguably the greatest weakness from a competitive point of view.
Economic policies that are immediately devastating don't cause 60 years of frenetic existential anxiety. If communism was as obviously devastating economically, the USA wouldn't have spent so much time worrying about losing its economic dominance.
As far as attributing deindustrialization to social democratic, all I can say is that this is laughable. Exporting your capital to countries where the wage share will be lower is the cause of deindustrialization, and it's simple economics. You need government policy in the form of direct or indirect capital controls to prevent that from happening.
What's ridiculous is claiming that the Soviet bloc had to outproduce the rest of the world in order to survive. There was no need for the Soviet bloc to maintain military parity with the US and its allies to maintain effective deterrence. Nuclear weapons, and their massive destructive potential, were the great equalizer and made it so the Soviet bloc could spend a small fraction of what the US and allies did, and maintain MAD.
>>The destruction wrought by "any kind of communist policy" still led to outcomes that were above the global average. Yes, they eventually lost, but they were very much in the same order of magnitude as the rest of the world, and were slowly catching up until political factors caused destruction, which was arguably the greatest weakness from a competitive point of view.
No, the Soviet bloc's economic statistics were over-stating their performance. They were seeing continuous depletion of intangible capital like work ethic, social trust, etc. The corruption in their societies grew to enormous proportions, with party insiders amassing huge amounts of power through their positions, and the privileges it gave them in the undergdound econonomy, including the blat system of favor-trading where high up officials who could bypass government controls on currency and goods had the most favors to sell.
Many of the current crop of billionaire oligarchs in Russia are former Soviet officials or relatives of these officials: https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/organized-crime-russi...
The lack of diversification and economic complexity was also obscured by the lack of a market economy to assign goods/services with prices. If such a market existed officially, then the extreme scarcity in basic consumer goods like toilet paper would have been reflected in high prices, and in lower inflation-adjusted income.
>>As far as attributing deindustrialization to social democratic, all I can say is that this is laughable. Exporting your capital to countries where the wage share will be lower is the cause of deindustrialization, and it's simple economics. You need government policy in the form of direct or indirect capital controls to prevent that from happening.
You finding it laughable while regurgitating a layman's understanding of deindustrialization is pretty egregious. Advanced economies can and ofter-do see more rapid growth of their manufacturing sectors than developing economies, and this is because other factors besides labor costs, like logistic costs, which are affected by infrastructure and proximity to the supply chain, access to abundant energy resources (e.g. natural gas, which the US has in abundance), an efficient and reliable legal system, a stable political system and the skillset of the workforce, can make a country the least costly place to site manufacturing, despite it having high labor costs.
The cause of the West's deindustrialization is broadly speaking, the capture of its economies by rent-seeking unions and regulatory agencies.
The first seeds of the economic destruction were planted in the 1930s, when laws like the NLRA granted totalitarian powers to unions, like the power to prevent companies from replacing them with workers outside the union.
The union movement completely captured US industry and extracted exorbitant benefits that crippled the golden geese of the US economy.
The labor laws passed in the 1930s and 50s guarantee that any industry that does start to become a significant contributor to national output, whether it's the Big Three Auto Makers and the big steel manufacturers in the 1950s, or Tesla, Amazon and Google today, becomes the target of rent-seeking unions who are impossible to effectively resist thanks to the free-market undermining labor laws in place.
The decline in productivity growth, particularly in globally competitive markets like manufacturing, is a predictable consequence of that.
Beyond labor regulations, is the growth of government social welfare spending, at the behest of public sector unions who increasingly control the political system:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-long...
A couple anecdotes illuminates the kind of power these unions wield:
New York has nearly 300,000 unionized public sector employees receiving over $100,000 a year:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/05/26/why...
In California, emergency workers can retire at 55 with 90% of their pension, that averages $108,000 per year.
California now has $1 trillion in pension obligations for its unionized public sector workers.
Every dollar taxed for social welfare programs that end up as pension payments to public sector workers, is one less dollar spent on infrastructure, or private sector investments that expand the country's capital (e.g. factories, R&D, etc).
>>The destruction wrought by "any kind of communist policy" still led to outcomes that were above the global average. Yes, they eventually lost, but they were very much in the same order of magnitude as the rest of the world, and were slowly catching up until political factors caused destruction, which was arguably the greatest weakness from a competitive point of view.
No, the Soviet bloc's economic statistics were over-stating their performance. They were seeing continuous depletion of intangible capital like work ethic, social trust, etc. The corruption in their societies grew to enormous proportions, with party insiders amassing huge amounts of power through their positions, and the privileges it gave them in the undergdound econonomy, including the blat system of favor-trading where high up officials who could bypass government controls on currency and goods had the most favors to sell.
Many of the current crop of billionaire oligarchs in Russia are former Soviet officials or relatives of these officials: https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/organized-crime-russi...
The lack of diversification and economic complexity was also obscured by the lack of a market economy to assign goods/services with prices. If such a market existed officially, then the extreme scarcity in basic consumer goods like toilet paper would have been reflected in high prices, and in lower inflation-adjusted income.
>>As far as attributing deindustrialization to social democratic, all I can say is that this is laughable. Exporting your capital to countries where the wage share will be lower is the cause of deindustrialization, and it's simple economics. You need government policy in the form of direct or indirect capital controls to prevent that from happening.
You finding it laughable while regurgitating a layman's understanding of deindustrialization is pretty egregious. Advanced economies can and ofter-do see more rapid growth of their manufacturing sectors than developing economies, and this is because other factors besides labor costs, like logistic costs, which are affected by infrastructure and proximity to the supply chain, access to abundant energy resources (e.g. natural gas, which the US has in abundance), an efficient and reliable legal system, a stable political system and the skillset of the workforce, can make a country the least costly place to site manufacturing, despite it having high labor costs.
The cause of the West's deindustrialization is broadly speaking, the capture of its economies by rent-seeking unions and regulatory agencies.
The first seeds of the economic destruction were planted in the 1930s, when laws like the NLRA granted totalitarian powers to unions, like the power to prevent companies from replacing them with workers outside the union.
The union movement completely captured US industry and extracted exorbitant benefits that crippled the golden geese of the US economy.
The labor laws passed in the 1930s and 50s guarantee that any industry that does start to become a significant contributor to national output, whether it's the Big Three Auto Makers and the big steel manufacturers in the 1950s, or Tesla, Amazon and Google today, becomes the target of rent-seeking unions who are impossible to effectively resist thanks to the free-market undermining labor laws in place.
The decline in productivity growth, particularly in globally competitive markets like manufacturing, is a predictable consequence of that.
Beyond labor regulations, is the growth of government social welfare spending, at the behest of public sector unions who increasingly control the political system:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-long...
A couple anecdotes illuminates the kind of power these unions wield:
New York has nearly 300,000 unionized public sector employees receiving over $100,000 a year:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/05/26/why...
In California, emergency workers can retire at 55 with 90% of their pension, that averages $108,000 per year.
California now has $1 trillion in pension obligations for its unionized public sector workers.
Every dollar taxed for social welfare programs that end up as pension payments to public sector workers, is one less dollar spent on infrastructure, or private sector investments that expand the country's capital (e.g. factories, R&D, etc).
They had already been elected to the government in both Italy and France though, in a coalition with more centrist socialist parties.
In both countries they already held ministerial positions, so this just isn't true.
In practice they'd likely end up becoming more moderate, like happened in San Marino, and eventually France too.
In both countries they already held ministerial positions, so this just isn't true.
In practice they'd likely end up becoming more moderate, like happened in San Marino, and eventually France too.
I think 'communist regime', looking at what the comment says about the practical problems such as confiscating property, is the institution of an actual communist economic system. It's one thing to have communists in government, but quite another to actually implement communist policies.
What is a communist policy? When Lenin invited foreign investment and allowed private property to facilitate it as part of his plan to build a communist society, was that not a communist policy? Or perhaps Lenin didn't want to implement communist policies?
Communist economics is Marxist economics. Of course there have been multiple waves of revisions of Marxism, but fundamentally it's based on Marx's theory of value as it's core axiom. In practice communists sometimes play the cards they are dealt in terms of the economy they start with and what's achievable, depending on how patient they are. Lenin viewed foreign investment as a necessary evil, a temporary measure while the economy was in a transitional state. Do you think Lenin viewed allowing foreign investment and private property as being long term, essential aspects of a well functioning, mature communist economy? Of course not.
Stalin was a lot less patient on this and instituted forced mass collectivism, with catastrophic consequences.
Stalin was a lot less patient on this and instituted forced mass collectivism, with catastrophic consequences.
What do you mean by private property? Do you mean that word in a Marxian sense? Or do you mean it in a classical/neoclassical sense and thus projecting non-Marxist economics on Marxist economics?
No one believes that foreign investment is anything more than a necessary evil - being reliant on foreign investment means that you can't mobilize your own capital.
The idea that markets are necessary for some industries is not at all incompatible with Marxist economics. Lenin's side of Marxist economics would be fine with markets as long as the property was owned cooperatively, until a post-scarcity society.
Stalin's turn towards state planning was out of perceived necessity, not because he was less patient. He, and others in the party, decided that it was acceptable to sacrifice overall economic development in order to develop the heavy industries necessary for war with capitalist countries, that he thought was inevitable if they were too weak. That, and he thought agricultural development was too slow. While it was a failure for agricultural output, it was objectively a massive success in its primary goal, and development of heavy industries at the speed of the NEP would have probably led to the USSR losing WW2.
No one believes that foreign investment is anything more than a necessary evil - being reliant on foreign investment means that you can't mobilize your own capital.
The idea that markets are necessary for some industries is not at all incompatible with Marxist economics. Lenin's side of Marxist economics would be fine with markets as long as the property was owned cooperatively, until a post-scarcity society.
Stalin's turn towards state planning was out of perceived necessity, not because he was less patient. He, and others in the party, decided that it was acceptable to sacrifice overall economic development in order to develop the heavy industries necessary for war with capitalist countries, that he thought was inevitable if they were too weak. That, and he thought agricultural development was too slow. While it was a failure for agricultural output, it was objectively a massive success in its primary goal, and development of heavy industries at the speed of the NEP would have probably led to the USSR losing WW2.
> They had already been elected to the government in both Italy and France though, in a coalition with more centrist socialist parties.
Sure, communists were elected to the government of the Czech republic up until the latest election. That only tells you that a share of the nation is radicals -- enough to elect some radical candidates to represent them.
But to actually become a communist nation, you need to confiscate the means of production from the rest of the nation. First, you don't get that just by winning some seats. You don't even get that by winning a majority of seats. That's a constitutional rewrite situation, not a political party situation. Something like that requires seizing control of much of the organs of civil society -- you have to get courts to not honor private property, for instance.
> In both countries they already held ministerial positions, so this just isn't true
Holding a ministerial position does not correspond to being able to eliminate private ownership of capital. The two are rather different.
> In practice they'd likely end up becoming more moderate, like happened in San Marino
The Most Serene Republic of San Marino? The 10 square mile tourist trap? Now you've lost me. If your claim is that these communist ministers would realize that they can't actually make their nation communist and just keep the name of communism while advocating for vaguely social democratic reforms, then absolutely. But that does not make the nation a "moderately communist" nation, it makes it a social democracy. Or are you one of those people who thinks social security is "communism" and your definition of a "moderately communist" country is present-day France? Is that what you mean?
Sure, communists were elected to the government of the Czech republic up until the latest election. That only tells you that a share of the nation is radicals -- enough to elect some radical candidates to represent them.
But to actually become a communist nation, you need to confiscate the means of production from the rest of the nation. First, you don't get that just by winning some seats. You don't even get that by winning a majority of seats. That's a constitutional rewrite situation, not a political party situation. Something like that requires seizing control of much of the organs of civil society -- you have to get courts to not honor private property, for instance.
> In both countries they already held ministerial positions, so this just isn't true
Holding a ministerial position does not correspond to being able to eliminate private ownership of capital. The two are rather different.
> In practice they'd likely end up becoming more moderate, like happened in San Marino
The Most Serene Republic of San Marino? The 10 square mile tourist trap? Now you've lost me. If your claim is that these communist ministers would realize that they can't actually make their nation communist and just keep the name of communism while advocating for vaguely social democratic reforms, then absolutely. But that does not make the nation a "moderately communist" nation, it makes it a social democracy. Or are you one of those people who thinks social security is "communism" and your definition of a "moderately communist" country is present-day France? Is that what you mean?
It doesn't have to happen overnight, they could just provide greater support for trade unions and co-operatives.
And nationalisation of "private property" and land reforms have happened outside of communist governments, e.g. in Nasser's Egypt, the Mexican oil reserves, Mossadegh and the Iranian oil reserves, the Shah's White Revolution, etc.
My whole point is that communism and communist parties didn't need to be seen as some radical "other" system, but could have become more moderate as society gradually accepted strong trade unions, co-operatives, and nationalised resources without the Cold War (much like the transitions to parliamentary democracy). Unfortunately the Cold War polarised everything, and now we're stuck with a society where the existence of billionaire is sacrosant.
I mentioned San Marino because they were governed by the communist party for 10 years, and weren't so extreme - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sammarinese_Communist_Party
And nationalisation of "private property" and land reforms have happened outside of communist governments, e.g. in Nasser's Egypt, the Mexican oil reserves, Mossadegh and the Iranian oil reserves, the Shah's White Revolution, etc.
My whole point is that communism and communist parties didn't need to be seen as some radical "other" system, but could have become more moderate as society gradually accepted strong trade unions, co-operatives, and nationalised resources without the Cold War (much like the transitions to parliamentary democracy). Unfortunately the Cold War polarised everything, and now we're stuck with a society where the existence of billionaire is sacrosant.
I mentioned San Marino because they were governed by the communist party for 10 years, and weren't so extreme - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sammarinese_Communist_Party
> I mentioned San Marino because they were governed by the communist party for 10 years, and weren't so extreme - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sammarinese_Communist_Party
Because they never tried to make San Marino into a communist economy, seeing as how it is not really an independent nation with any kind of economic sovereignty. The only thing it does is sell its own postage stamps and sell some commemorative gold coins. It's a big castle surrounded by some vineyards. They make money from tourism and duty-free shopping, and of course tax-avoidance.
It's like if you elect a communist to be the leader of your Elks Lodge, and then praise his moderate communist rule.
Because they never tried to make San Marino into a communist economy, seeing as how it is not really an independent nation with any kind of economic sovereignty. The only thing it does is sell its own postage stamps and sell some commemorative gold coins. It's a big castle surrounded by some vineyards. They make money from tourism and duty-free shopping, and of course tax-avoidance.
It's like if you elect a communist to be the leader of your Elks Lodge, and then praise his moderate communist rule.
They certainly did try to make San Marino a communist economy. It's just that they didn't think that this meant the immediate nationalisation of all property.
They were far from alone in doing so, notably Marx and Lenin agreed and advocated for similar trajectories, so it was far from a fringe position.
A popular communist program for developped countries is to remove all political influence as a result of money, encourage cooperatives, nationalizes key industries (as in China), and manage productive surpluses to provide for everyone, removing markets where they are zero sum of negative sum (housing, etc...), and coordinating markets for optimum growth, until the economy is developped enough that the entirety of the local economy can be ran as either part of the nationalizes sector or by cooperatives.
It's a fairly mild program when compared to Stalin. There is not really any reason to abolish private property until the economy is large enough that it can be fully run by the workers from a communist point of view - Stalin did it because he judged that heavy industry was not developing rapidly enough, which was a strategic judgement mostly on grounds of the preservation of the state (and therefore himself). Otherwise Lenin's policy of managed capitalism/socialism for a hundred years or so was in place.
They were far from alone in doing so, notably Marx and Lenin agreed and advocated for similar trajectories, so it was far from a fringe position.
A popular communist program for developped countries is to remove all political influence as a result of money, encourage cooperatives, nationalizes key industries (as in China), and manage productive surpluses to provide for everyone, removing markets where they are zero sum of negative sum (housing, etc...), and coordinating markets for optimum growth, until the economy is developped enough that the entirety of the local economy can be ran as either part of the nationalizes sector or by cooperatives.
It's a fairly mild program when compared to Stalin. There is not really any reason to abolish private property until the economy is large enough that it can be fully run by the workers from a communist point of view - Stalin did it because he judged that heavy industry was not developing rapidly enough, which was a strategic judgement mostly on grounds of the preservation of the state (and therefore himself). Otherwise Lenin's policy of managed capitalism/socialism for a hundred years or so was in place.
The Soviet intelligence apparatus spent a good deal of time and effort post-1945 ensuring that pretty much every state in Eastern and Central Europe would be dominated by the local communist party, parties which largely took direction from Moscow itself. In some places, like Poland, the process began even earlier when the war was still ongoing. The idea that they wouldn't have done so if Communist governments reigned in France and Italy is laughable.
Read Postwar, by Tony Judt. It's a pretty good roundup of what happened in Europe during the post-war era, including the start of the Cold War.
Read Postwar, by Tony Judt. It's a pretty good roundup of what happened in Europe during the post-war era, including the start of the Cold War.
> France and Italy could have had moderate communist governments
As an Italian born in the 70's, thanks but no thanks?
As an Italian born in the 70's, thanks but no thanks?
Why? Has the “partitocrazia” first and the ‘80s cleptocracy, Berlusconi’s downward spiral, and the last attempts an installing neoliberal proxy governments done any good to the country?
I guess there’s no point discussing impossible alternative scenarios - especially given the extremely conservative attitude of Italian society - but an Italy with a more Scandinavian-like compromise would have been an interesting country to live in.
I guess there’s no point discussing impossible alternative scenarios - especially given the extremely conservative attitude of Italian society - but an Italy with a more Scandinavian-like compromise would have been an interesting country to live in.
"Italy with a more Scandinavian-like compromise"
Not OP but as a Finnish (so not True Scandinavian but close enough)- Scandinavian wellfare state is as far from Communism as anything. Please don't confuse our social democratic parties with actual communists.
The Scandinavian liberal and egalitarian political outlook predates Marx (and Adam Smith in fact) - see for example Anders Chydenius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Chydenius . While set in familiar enlightenment milieu Scandinavian concept of wellfare-state cannot be understood by labeling it as "socialism" which is a later construct.
Wellfare state itself of course was born after second world-war but the philosophical basis is more or less set in an earlier egalitarian view of man.
Not OP but as a Finnish (so not True Scandinavian but close enough)- Scandinavian wellfare state is as far from Communism as anything. Please don't confuse our social democratic parties with actual communists.
The Scandinavian liberal and egalitarian political outlook predates Marx (and Adam Smith in fact) - see for example Anders Chydenius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Chydenius . While set in familiar enlightenment milieu Scandinavian concept of wellfare-state cannot be understood by labeling it as "socialism" which is a later construct.
Wellfare state itself of course was born after second world-war but the philosophical basis is more or less set in an earlier egalitarian view of man.
Yet strangely, if anyone suggests similar goals for the US they're invariably attacked as socialist or communist.
It's more accurate to say that socialism is a later expression of the same ideals - which actually date back to the late 18th century, when they appeared around Europe during a period of revolutions and enlightenment-inspired liberalism.
It's more accurate to say that socialism is a later expression of the same ideals - which actually date back to the late 18th century, when they appeared around Europe during a period of revolutions and enlightenment-inspired liberalism.
Socialism by that name predates Marx, but (unlike, I think, liberalism) you can find recognizable socialist thinking in the classics. The impulse toward egalitarianism is omnipresent throughout history, because equality is such an appealing Schelling point. Marx's genius was finding a justification for extremist Digger-style egalitarian ideology in the face of such dramatic manifestations of the positive-sum potential of voluntary exchange; in an earlier era where the gain of one feudal lord was inevitably the loss of another, the Digger approach is almost inevitable, but in the face of the explosive prosperity of the Industrial Revolution, Marx had to do quite a bit of work to explain how voluntary trade worsened the situation of the working class.
To a great extent he was correct in his analysis of existing conditions, but, as it turned out, not about their inevitability or about how to improve them.
To a great extent he was correct in his analysis of existing conditions, but, as it turned out, not about their inevitability or about how to improve them.
This is not at all what Marx believed. I understand where the misconception comes from though.
Marx was quite particular amongst socialism because he did not believe humans were equal in ability.
Indeed, he argued with other socialists and believed that different people had superior and inferior abilities, and even that the more productive people logically deserved a higher wage, and so did the people with greater need.
This is why unlike other socialists of the era, Marx did not advocate for equal wages - he thought that people that were more productive should have a greater income (as well as people who needed it, ie, people with families, handicapped, etc...)
He also did not believe that conditions would not improve - he was a radical proponent of economic growth, and thought that things would improve for a significant amount of time until a plateau was hit, at which point a transition to communism would be the only alternative to decay.
Instead, Marx's argument was not that capitalism created inequality - he thought that inequality was inherent to the human condition - but that capitalism fundamentally engendered inequality on the basis not of personal ability, but on the basis of artificial social relations that rewarded the ownership of capital far more than the inherent inequality of humans ability and human need.
He also would vehemently disagree that voluntary trade worsened the situation of the working class - he wrote extensively about how capitalism was an immense improvement over feudalism, and how it would and was improving the situation of the working class materially. The issue he had is that the thought that this material improvement would eventually stop contributing to well-being, and that eventually the social harm caused by the capitalist social relations would lead to a plateau then decay of overall wellbeing.
If you look at his immediate suggestion in how to improve them, you would find them much more inline with modern welfare states than anything else, and indeed that was why Lenin basically instated a welfare state when he took power.
Here are the actual policies that Marx wanted to see implemented:
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.
These are certainly quite radical. But all of these are suggestions that are either already implemented today in capitalist countries, or that liberal capitalists have advocated for. Except for 1., 3. and 2., he was actually correct about how to improve the conditions of the working class - the abolition of private property of capital was his eventual goal, yes, but he was incredibly precient about the policies that would be used to improve capitalist society.
Marx was quite particular amongst socialism because he did not believe humans were equal in ability.
Indeed, he argued with other socialists and believed that different people had superior and inferior abilities, and even that the more productive people logically deserved a higher wage, and so did the people with greater need.
This is why unlike other socialists of the era, Marx did not advocate for equal wages - he thought that people that were more productive should have a greater income (as well as people who needed it, ie, people with families, handicapped, etc...)
He also did not believe that conditions would not improve - he was a radical proponent of economic growth, and thought that things would improve for a significant amount of time until a plateau was hit, at which point a transition to communism would be the only alternative to decay.
Instead, Marx's argument was not that capitalism created inequality - he thought that inequality was inherent to the human condition - but that capitalism fundamentally engendered inequality on the basis not of personal ability, but on the basis of artificial social relations that rewarded the ownership of capital far more than the inherent inequality of humans ability and human need.
He also would vehemently disagree that voluntary trade worsened the situation of the working class - he wrote extensively about how capitalism was an immense improvement over feudalism, and how it would and was improving the situation of the working class materially. The issue he had is that the thought that this material improvement would eventually stop contributing to well-being, and that eventually the social harm caused by the capitalist social relations would lead to a plateau then decay of overall wellbeing.
If you look at his immediate suggestion in how to improve them, you would find them much more inline with modern welfare states than anything else, and indeed that was why Lenin basically instated a welfare state when he took power.
Here are the actual policies that Marx wanted to see implemented:
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.
These are certainly quite radical. But all of these are suggestions that are either already implemented today in capitalist countries, or that liberal capitalists have advocated for. Except for 1., 3. and 2., he was actually correct about how to improve the conditions of the working class - the abolition of private property of capital was his eventual goal, yes, but he was incredibly precient about the policies that would be used to improve capitalist society.
Thank you for sharing your point of view! I agree with most of what you said, and I was remiss in not quoting the Communist Manifesto myself.
Still, I don't think you can be a liberal capitalist and favor "confiscation of the property of all emigrants", "equal liability of all to work", or even "abolution of property in land", or even an exclusive monopoly on credit, and given that "the means of communication" here presumably means newspapers (as opposed to mails and telegraph companies) I don't see how a liberal could be in favor of that either, since it abolishes freedom of the press; and centralization of the means of transport in the hands of the state eliminates freedom of domestic travel. In countries that have abolished freedom of the press, property in land, freedom of domestic travel, and/or the freedom to emigrate without having all your property confiscated, it has not in fact improved the conditions of the working class; very much the contrary, it has been used to enslave and impoverish them. Even inheritance abolition and heavy income taxes are not clearly compatible with liberalism, but they aren't as central to liberalism as land tenure and the freedoms of the press, travel, and emigration. (Georgists want to abolish land ownership too, but George didn't claim to be a liberal.)
I didn't mean to say that Marx claimed that voluntary exchange worsened the condition of the working class more than feudalism, just that in its capitalist form it still tended to the immiseration of the working class.
As for "prescience," I'm not sure it was a question of prescience; I think that to a great degree the Russian Revolution and the Warsaw Pact simply moved the Overton Window a long way toward Marxist policies. I think capitalist societies adopted Marx's policies not, in many cases, because they would have anyway, but because (a) they were under pressure to do so when the policies were popular, so people wouldn't emigrate to Russia or replace their own governments with Communist ones, and (b) they were under less pressure not to do so when the policies were unpopular, because there were less and less places where you could escape from those policies.
Still, I don't think you can be a liberal capitalist and favor "confiscation of the property of all emigrants", "equal liability of all to work", or even "abolution of property in land", or even an exclusive monopoly on credit, and given that "the means of communication" here presumably means newspapers (as opposed to mails and telegraph companies) I don't see how a liberal could be in favor of that either, since it abolishes freedom of the press; and centralization of the means of transport in the hands of the state eliminates freedom of domestic travel. In countries that have abolished freedom of the press, property in land, freedom of domestic travel, and/or the freedom to emigrate without having all your property confiscated, it has not in fact improved the conditions of the working class; very much the contrary, it has been used to enslave and impoverish them. Even inheritance abolition and heavy income taxes are not clearly compatible with liberalism, but they aren't as central to liberalism as land tenure and the freedoms of the press, travel, and emigration. (Georgists want to abolish land ownership too, but George didn't claim to be a liberal.)
I didn't mean to say that Marx claimed that voluntary exchange worsened the condition of the working class more than feudalism, just that in its capitalist form it still tended to the immiseration of the working class.
As for "prescience," I'm not sure it was a question of prescience; I think that to a great degree the Russian Revolution and the Warsaw Pact simply moved the Overton Window a long way toward Marxist policies. I think capitalist societies adopted Marx's policies not, in many cases, because they would have anyway, but because (a) they were under pressure to do so when the policies were popular, so people wouldn't emigrate to Russia or replace their own governments with Communist ones, and (b) they were under less pressure not to do so when the policies were unpopular, because there were less and less places where you could escape from those policies.
Scandinavia is in no way communist, not even "moderate' communist. For the nearest equivalent to that, Yugoslavia would be a better comparison.
If you look at the rapid industrialisation and growth of Italy through to the 60s starting from a similarly dire start, they leaped ahead of Yugoslavia. Yes Italy suffered recession through the 80s and 90s, but the Yugoslav economy completely collapsed. 150% inflation in Italy spread over a decade? Try 9,000% inflation in Yugoslavia over just 6 years in the same era. They were even a net importer agricultural produce despite 29% of their work force being in agriculture.
More recently since you brought him up yes Berlusconi was an idiot that hurt Italy, no question, but to really wipe out an economy right down to the roots there's no substitute for Marxism.
If you look at the rapid industrialisation and growth of Italy through to the 60s starting from a similarly dire start, they leaped ahead of Yugoslavia. Yes Italy suffered recession through the 80s and 90s, but the Yugoslav economy completely collapsed. 150% inflation in Italy spread over a decade? Try 9,000% inflation in Yugoslavia over just 6 years in the same era. They were even a net importer agricultural produce despite 29% of their work force being in agriculture.
More recently since you brought him up yes Berlusconi was an idiot that hurt Italy, no question, but to really wipe out an economy right down to the roots there's no substitute for Marxism.
Italy also benefited from access to the European market, while Yugoslavia was stuck - and even there not quite well integrated either - with the flailing economies of the Eastern Block.
About your last statement, you seem to forget some of the attempts at Neoliberal Edens in South America of the '90s. They didn't go that well, haven't they?
About your last statement, you seem to forget some of the attempts at Neoliberal Edens in South America of the '90s. They didn't go that well, haven't they?
I'm not sure if any liberal thinker would label policies such as fixed exchange rates, constant deficit funded by foreign borrowing, military dictatorships, as "liberal".
Social Democracies are not Communist States. Communism requires certain extreme actions, not least of which is dissolving private property and seizing it for the state. Last I heard, Norway isn't taking everyone's land away and forcing everyone to live in communes.
Sure, but the OP said "moderate communism" and I wrote that a Scandinavian-like compromise would have been an interesting scenario for Italy.
I didn't quite say the two were the same thing, although some - n.b. some - ethical assumptions are cut from the same cloth.
I didn't quite say the two were the same thing, although some - n.b. some - ethical assumptions are cut from the same cloth.
I'm in agreement with another user's opinion that there is no such thing as moderate communism given that several of its core concepts are radically distinct from other forms of government/economic systems. Rejecting private property as a concept is a big threshold to cross. So is a full collectivization of labor. There is only one nation I know of that operated with a similar view but wasn't Marxist and that's the Inca.
> including this PDP-11 microcomputer
Notably, a clone of a western design. Which is a recurrent theme in Soviet computer industry, there were very few indigenous Soviet architectures, and the few that existed were mostly limited to high-end mainframes that saw only handful of installations.
Notably, a clone of a western design. Which is a recurrent theme in Soviet computer industry, there were very few indigenous Soviet architectures, and the few that existed were mostly limited to high-end mainframes that saw only handful of installations.
It's a recurrent theme in the computer industry in general, which is why I'm typing this on an AMD A10, AMD's souped-up clone of Intel's i386, a souped-up clone of Intel's own 8086, a souped-up clone of Intel's own 8080, a souped-up clone of Intel's own 8008, a low-performance but cheap clone of Datapoint's 2200 terminal CPU from the early 01970s; running Linus's souped-up clone of Unix and Mozilla's souped-up clone of NCSA Mosaic, itself a souped-up and crippled clone of TimBL's graphical WWW browser.
Ah, but there are clones, and there are clones. Of course, many Soviet designs were literal copies of Western designs. This included many of the mainframes and minis copied from the IBM 360 or PDP-11 family. The USSR produced TTL integrated circuits in number from about 1970 on and they just used them to copy Western designs built the same way. Sometimes loosely, sometimes exact copies of the schematics just scaled around the metric inch (1 inch = 2.5 mm) the Soviets preferred. When VLSI came along they also copied those designs at the mask level.
But that wasn't always the case. And the K1801VM1 and family is one of the exceptions. It's a clone of the PDP-11 which was popular in the USSR and they had software that ran on it. It has the same instruction set and a Q-Bus-like interface like a PDP-11 -- but it was an original design throughout electronically and not some mask ripoff of DEC. Originally designed as a microcontroller unlike anything DEC ever used the PDP-11 architecture for. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1801_series_CPU
But that wasn't always the case. And the K1801VM1 and family is one of the exceptions. It's a clone of the PDP-11 which was popular in the USSR and they had software that ran on it. It has the same instruction set and a Q-Bus-like interface like a PDP-11 -- but it was an original design throughout electronically and not some mask ripoff of DEC. Originally designed as a microcontroller unlike anything DEC ever used the PDP-11 architecture for. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1801_series_CPU
That's pretty wild. Note that the PDP-11 was widely used in control and high-level embedded applications, the sort of thing you'd use a nice SBC for today. In a previous life, I used an LSI-11 as recently as the nineties that was part of an X-ray diffraction machine. But as you said, not as a microcontroller.
By all accounts, Soviet chip development was ahead of that of the US (Intel). Then one day a party official killed the project. At least the lead guy found his way to the US and to Intel and the rest, as they say, is history.
Definitely not true. The Soviet electronics industry was always a generation behind the US in particular and the west in general.
When Victor Belenko defected with his MiG-25 in 1976 the CIA found that it was still using vacuum tubes when the US hard introduced the F-14 two years earlier which had the world's first microprocessor. Although the existence of it was classified for decades and until recently it was thought the Intel 4004 was the first.
Why they were behind, I'm not sure. They were definitely ahead in some other places but the technological gap continued to increase the later you got into the cold war.
When Victor Belenko defected with his MiG-25 in 1976 the CIA found that it was still using vacuum tubes when the US hard introduced the F-14 two years earlier which had the world's first microprocessor. Although the existence of it was classified for decades and until recently it was thought the Intel 4004 was the first.
Why they were behind, I'm not sure. They were definitely ahead in some other places but the technological gap continued to increase the later you got into the cold war.
Using vacuum tubes did have some advantages - notably being more EMP resistant than normal electronics. Given one of the MiG-25's roles was to intercept incoming nuclear bombers this was presumably an important requirement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-25#Wester...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-25#Wester...
Not using vacuum tubes here would be kind of motivating, in a "intercept that bomber or fall off the sky" way.
The reasons were rather simple: lack of motivation which is beyond the innovation in capitalism. The enterprises were part of ministries, and their directors were just managers working for salary. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ministries_of_the_Sovi...)
You can imagine state economy composed of 30-40 large corporations, like Walmart or LIDL running every grocery store, or Microsoft being the only software manufacturer. Remember stories of turf wars in Microsoft, between old and new technologies? Same thing was in the entire USSR.
Soviet government distributed investments, so you had to convince them. This was possible if you had a lot of political weight.
If you managed to get investment funds, your enterprise could not gain extra profit, because prices were regulated, and even if you were more efficient in production and over-produced for high demand, you did not own the extra money.
So, the prize for introducing a new product would be just a bonus and probably a state decoration. And it was often not worth the trouble fighting with the higher ranks in the ministry.
Another issue was central planning ahead of time. For instance, my father in his research institute would make demand plans for microchips and other electronic parts 2 years ahead (so that if there's more demand, the manufacturers have time to plan and budget for that).
This meant, it was really hard to introduce new hardware, and little incentive to try manufacturing new chips.
It was much easier to run the enterprise and do the plans as usually.
You can imagine state economy composed of 30-40 large corporations, like Walmart or LIDL running every grocery store, or Microsoft being the only software manufacturer. Remember stories of turf wars in Microsoft, between old and new technologies? Same thing was in the entire USSR.
Soviet government distributed investments, so you had to convince them. This was possible if you had a lot of political weight.
If you managed to get investment funds, your enterprise could not gain extra profit, because prices were regulated, and even if you were more efficient in production and over-produced for high demand, you did not own the extra money.
So, the prize for introducing a new product would be just a bonus and probably a state decoration. And it was often not worth the trouble fighting with the higher ranks in the ministry.
Another issue was central planning ahead of time. For instance, my father in his research institute would make demand plans for microchips and other electronic parts 2 years ahead (so that if there's more demand, the manufacturers have time to plan and budget for that).
This meant, it was really hard to introduce new hardware, and little incentive to try manufacturing new chips.
It was much easier to run the enterprise and do the plans as usually.
citation needed
Is it? Not every comment needs to be cited; this isn’t University.
Google Soviet engineer Intel and look at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Pentkovski
Google Soviet engineer Intel and look at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Pentkovski
Pentkovski was a student when the decision to axe domestic development was made.
His achievement is overstated in Russia (mainly from the urban legend that his surname led to Pentium). He is a great engineer, but Intel never had a shortage of people of his caliber.
His achievement is overstated in Russia (mainly from the urban legend that his surname led to Pentium). He is a great engineer, but Intel never had a shortage of people of his caliber.
But he was still good enough to lead the Intel team that developed the Pentium III, or is that an overstatement?
From his Wikepedia page:
> At the beginning of 1990s, he immigrated to United States where he worked at Intel and led the team that developed the architecture for the Pentium III processor
From his Wikepedia page:
> At the beginning of 1990s, he immigrated to United States where he worked at Intel and led the team that developed the architecture for the Pentium III processor
He was good enough, what's your point though? That Pentium 3 (started well over a decade after Soviet demise) wouldn't have happened if he hadn't worked at Intel?
You gotta at least get your facts right. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. The Pentium III was released within that same decade (Feb. 1999) [1], not "well over a decade after Soviet demise".
In the same manner that the US space program would have advanced without input from Wernher von Braun [2], the development of Pentium III would have happened minus Pentkovski, though their presence pushed development faster and in directions that the projects would have taken longer to reach without them.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_III [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun
In the same manner that the US space program would have advanced without input from Wernher von Braun [2], the development of Pentium III would have happened minus Pentkovski, though their presence pushed development faster and in directions that the projects would have taken longer to reach without them.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_III [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun
Pentkovski is no von Braun, just one of scores of processors engineers in his cohort. That there was pentium 2 before him and 4 after him is a pretty solid hint.
It wouldn't be a proper USSR thread without green accounts puffing up soviet accomplishments.
A PDP-11 home computer (!) nevertheless.
Heathkit had the H11 in 1977:
http://cini.classiccmp.org/heath_h11.htm
It’s a shame they didn’t out-PC the IBM PC. Such a nice machine.
Imagine if everyone had Unix instead of PC-DOS…
Imagine if everyone had Unix instead of PC-DOS…
Heathkit was kind of shitty at designing computers. I grew up on an H89, a contemporary of the Apple ][, but without sound, color, or a memory-mapped character generator, and vastly slower in software. It actually had a 9600-baud serial link between the computer and the screen, which was run by a separate CPU you couldn't reprogram without an EPROM burner. Heathkit's HDOS (on the H89, no idea about the H-11) was a clone of RT-11, not Unix. It wasn't a bad clone but it lacked Unix's power and generality.
The H-100 was really very nice, but it was already too late for anything not PC compatible.
Yeah… the H100 is one I’d love to play with.
I spent a fair bit of time with a Z-100. It was indeed pretty great; MS-DOS ("Z-DOS") was a big improvement over HDOS, but the graphics were the biggest draw for me, being roughly EGA-class. It lacked speed and compatibility, though, and IIRC sound. Also, my dad's monitor was monochrome, so it lacked color, too. I hated that green.
Just by running MS-DOS and not having that garish CGA font makes it already a winner.
A lot of companies thought that making a better computer was enough, but the PC was so poorly designed that people had to write software that directly used the hardware to make it run at bearable speeds. This nullified any advantage those who built better PCs had.
A lot of companies thought that making a better computer was enough, but the PC was so poorly designed that people had to write software that directly used the hardware to make it run at bearable speeds. This nullified any advantage those who built better PCs had.
Not sure what was so wrong with the design; I recall people would bypass BIOS calls for speed but I never understood why. I guess there was no BitBlt or set-multiple-pixels call, so you incurred call-and-return overhead for every pixel drawn?
Later I ran AutoCAD on a PC-XT with a CGA and an MDA. The graphics were on the CGA, but all the text was on the MDA screen, which had, I think, a slightly nicer font; the lack of a shadow mask made the letterforms break up less, although it was the same shitty green phosphor as the Z-100. Even bypassing the BIOS, line drawing was slow enough that when you erased a line it would just draw the line in the background color, leaving spaces wherever it intersected anything else; periodically you would have to type REDRAW and wait a second or two, which would have been unbearable if you had to do it after every erasure.
Games got by with blits to small parts of the screen, commonly with XOR (a trick AutoCAD used for drawing the crosshairs and rubberband lines, and ended up having to pay a patent troll for). Some, like ASTROTIT (nsfw), managed to draw a fixed background with sprites on top of it, redrawing it when they passed.
This was the era when 3-D CAD systems still used "calligraphic" displays from Evans & Sutherland (called "random stroke CRTs" in less pompous times), like the vector displays used in the arcade games Tempest and Star Wars, but so expensive I never saw one in my life. You could do 3-D on a CGA (3-DEMON was a super fun first-person CGA Pac-Man clone, like an FPS but with no shooting) but at its shitty resolution, 640x200 (or half that if you wanted color), and updating the whole CGA screen was, as I said, noticeably slow. The same 16 kilobytes of RAM used for a vector display would have been enough to put 5000 lines on a 4096x4096 "calligraphic" display, and you could move any of them whenever you wanted --- or change the camera matrix.
Later I ran AutoCAD on a PC-XT with a CGA and an MDA. The graphics were on the CGA, but all the text was on the MDA screen, which had, I think, a slightly nicer font; the lack of a shadow mask made the letterforms break up less, although it was the same shitty green phosphor as the Z-100. Even bypassing the BIOS, line drawing was slow enough that when you erased a line it would just draw the line in the background color, leaving spaces wherever it intersected anything else; periodically you would have to type REDRAW and wait a second or two, which would have been unbearable if you had to do it after every erasure.
Games got by with blits to small parts of the screen, commonly with XOR (a trick AutoCAD used for drawing the crosshairs and rubberband lines, and ended up having to pay a patent troll for). Some, like ASTROTIT (nsfw), managed to draw a fixed background with sprites on top of it, redrawing it when they passed.
This was the era when 3-D CAD systems still used "calligraphic" displays from Evans & Sutherland (called "random stroke CRTs" in less pompous times), like the vector displays used in the arcade games Tempest and Star Wars, but so expensive I never saw one in my life. You could do 3-D on a CGA (3-DEMON was a super fun first-person CGA Pac-Man clone, like an FPS but with no shooting) but at its shitty resolution, 640x200 (or half that if you wanted color), and updating the whole CGA screen was, as I said, noticeably slow. The same 16 kilobytes of RAM used for a vector display would have been enough to put 5000 lines on a 4096x4096 "calligraphic" display, and you could move any of them whenever you wanted --- or change the camera matrix.
> It actually had a 9600-baud serial link between the computer and the screen, which was run by a separate CPU you couldn't reprogram without an EPROM burner.
Such a missed opportunity… it’d be easy to set up a memory-based terminal to be read/written at QBUS speed… It could have a serial keyboard, as those were relatively abundant, and a composite monochrome output.
It’d make a world of difference. And they could sell it to DEC customers who used PDP-11’s as technical workstations. If there were companies using IBM 1130’s connected to 2250’s, there has to be someone who used PDP-11’s…
Such a missed opportunity… it’d be easy to set up a memory-based terminal to be read/written at QBUS speed… It could have a serial keyboard, as those were relatively abundant, and a composite monochrome output.
It’d make a world of difference. And they could sell it to DEC customers who used PDP-11’s as technical workstations. If there were companies using IBM 1130’s connected to 2250’s, there has to be someone who used PDP-11’s…
I don't think the H-89 had a QBUS, and you couldn't have sold it to DEC customers who used PDP-11s, because it wouldn't have been able to run either their software or their peripherals. I don't know what kind of display hardware the H-11 used.
Terminals of that epoch were full of missed opportunities. Woz was smart enough to see them and avoid them, but most companies didn't even have a position where someone would have been in a position to do what Woz did. And that's a major (necessary but not sufficient, of course) reason that Apple is bigger than Datapoint, Olivetti, Tandem, Heath, Kaypro, and Hewlett-Packard today.
Terminals of that epoch were full of missed opportunities. Woz was smart enough to see them and avoid them, but most companies didn't even have a position where someone would have been in a position to do what Woz did. And that's a major (necessary but not sufficient, of course) reason that Apple is bigger than Datapoint, Olivetti, Tandem, Heath, Kaypro, and Hewlett-Packard today.
did those things even work?
A surprisingly advanced concept for the 80s, and from the USSR no less.
I take it half (or none) of those peripherals didn't work or were really bad?
Like, I can say the flat speakers using the tech available at the time would've sounded absolutely horrible. And the flat screen was very likely just a mockup.
I take it half (or none) of those peripherals didn't work or were really bad?
Like, I can say the flat speakers using the tech available at the time would've sounded absolutely horrible. And the flat screen was very likely just a mockup.
This is a mockup, most likely intended to showcase the vision and test the mechanics/ergonomics.
I'd be surprised if anything worked (even if the keys could be pressed). It's still a pretty impressive - and prescient design though.
I'd be surprised if anything worked (even if the keys could be pressed). It's still a pretty impressive - and prescient design though.
What you see at the pictures is all USSR industrial complex was capable of. And I don't mean the computer. I mean single instance of wooden/paper "device" representing how the concept would look like.
That is quite harsh. While no credible consumer goods requiring complex manufacture or design come from the former USSR area (except of Baltics which retained pre-soviet spirit) to this day, the industrial complex managed to create quit a lot of ... industrial
stuff that they managed to sell around the world.
Some well known examples:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAZ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_(rocket_family)
And of course the list would not be complete without:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalashnikov_rifle
Some well known examples:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAZ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_(rocket_family)
And of course the list would not be complete without:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalashnikov_rifle
Most of the stuff in your list was basically produced manually in very small quantities. UAZ/AK would be an exception, but they were unusable without careful selection or manually manufactured replacement parts.
While inefficient, the system did create complex things that worked more or less as advertized - which is quite far from the the claim that the system could not make anything real or worthwhile. It's just not a very good system.
There was a joke in Soviet Union:
Americans stole plans for super secret soviet stealth fighter. Every time Lockheed-Martin engineers try to replicate the design according to documentation they end up building steam engine. So Americans kidnap one of the Soviet engineers to help them to decipher the design. Once he sees the documents he points at the small remark at the very end: to get the desired device after building a steam engine shape it manually with a file.
This joke is a pretty accurate description of the state of precision manufacturing capabilities of USSR. Manually created single prototype is not a "complex thing that worked".
Americans stole plans for super secret soviet stealth fighter. Every time Lockheed-Martin engineers try to replicate the design according to documentation they end up building steam engine. So Americans kidnap one of the Soviet engineers to help them to decipher the design. Once he sees the documents he points at the small remark at the very end: to get the desired device after building a steam engine shape it manually with a file.
This joke is a pretty accurate description of the state of precision manufacturing capabilities of USSR. Manually created single prototype is not a "complex thing that worked".
The Kalashnikov rifle family is undoubtedly the most common weapon platform in the world (even if only having a slight edge in numbers over the AR platform). They made a lot of them. And they were quite effective. I'm no USSR shill, but credit must be given where due.
Kalashnikovs were great. Many Russian things were great -- mathematicians, physicists, composers, attack helicopters, etc.
> Kalashnikov rifle family
was a copy of a German design, not independent invention.
> They made a lot of them
Most was just garbage. You'll have to know a year and a serial number range to have higher probability of picking an actually usable weapon.
was a copy of a German design, not independent invention.
> They made a lot of them
Most was just garbage. You'll have to know a year and a serial number range to have higher probability of picking an actually usable weapon.
If you mean StG 44, then no, AK is not in any sense a copy of that, or any other design. It is a popular myth, but it's completely wrong, and rather evident to anyone who has ever seen both rifles disassembled.
Kalashnikov did draw inspiration from other designs, of course, same as any other gun designer. M1 Garand was arguably the design that influenced it most - most notably, the trigger, but also the principle of long-stroke piston action. This is further supported by Kalashnikov mentioning Garand as one of his favorite designs several times. But even then, AK is very much a distinct design.
Here's a detailed analysis: https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2015/05/05/rifle-paterni...
And I have no idea where you got the "most was just garbage" claim from. It's certainly not true, and I haven't heard it before.
Kalashnikov did draw inspiration from other designs, of course, same as any other gun designer. M1 Garand was arguably the design that influenced it most - most notably, the trigger, but also the principle of long-stroke piston action. This is further supported by Kalashnikov mentioning Garand as one of his favorite designs several times. But even then, AK is very much a distinct design.
Here's a detailed analysis: https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2015/05/05/rifle-paterni...
And I have no idea where you got the "most was just garbage" claim from. It's certainly not true, and I haven't heard it before.
SU produced a lot of airplanes, both military and for civil use. If that's not an example of complicated industry, I don't know what is then.
And with 'modern' capitalism in Ukraine Antonov aircraft factory is as good as dead.
And with 'modern' capitalism in Ukraine Antonov aircraft factory is as good as dead.
Like many of their policies, looks good on paper. But the reality just doesn’t support it as anything practical.
The article doesn't touch on the architecture of the actual computer at all, but we can presume that, like most designs of the era (both Soviet and non-), it followed industry standards.