From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: a History of Soviet Cybernetics

FROM EWSPEAKN TO A HISTORY OF SOVIET CYBERNETICS SLAVA GEROVITCH From Newspeak to Cyberspeak This Page Intentionally Left Blank From Newspeak to Cyberspeak A History of Soviet Cybernetics Slava Gerovitch The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England ©2002 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. Set in Sabon by The MIT Press. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gerovitch, Slava. From newspeak to cyberspeak : a history of Soviet cybernetics / Slava Gerovitch. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-262-07232-7 (hard cover : alk. paper) 1. Cybernetics—Soviet Union—History. I. Title. Q305 .G47 2002 003'.5'0947—dc21 2001056241 for my mother, Raisa Sklyar This Page Intentionally Left Blank Contents Preface and Acknowledgements xi Introduction: Soviet Science and Politics through the Prism of Language 1 1The Cold War in Code Words: The Newspeak of Soviet Science 11 Balancing Military and Ideological Priorities for Cold War Science 14 Shifting Boundaries between Knowledge and Ideology 18 Newspeak: The Fundamentals 21 Scientific Newspeak 26 “Formalism” as a Floating Signifier 31 From Formulas to “Formalism” in Mathematics 33 From Literary Form to “Formalism” in Linguistics 37 The Specter of “Idealism” in Physiology 42 2 Cyberspeak: A Universal Language for Men and Machines 51 Norbert Wiener and Andrei Kolmogorov: Two Mathematicians Tackle Biology 56 Control via Feedback: The Body as a Servomechanism 61 The Order of Life: The Organism as an Entropy-Reducing Machine 64 Human Communication as an Engineering Problem: Man as an “Information Source” 67 The Computer and the Mind as Universal Logical Machines 72 The Logic of the Brain: The Nervous System as a Turing Machine 75 The Computer as a Brain and the Brain as a Computer 79 The Making of Cyberspeak and the Emergence of Cybernetics 83 viii Contents Cyberspeak Becomes Universal 89 The Cybernetics Bandwagon 96 3 “Normal Pseudo-Science” 103 Cybernetic Ideas in a Soviet Context: Pro and Contra 105 “Russian Scandal” at the Root of Cybernetics 113 Postwar Ideological Campaigns as Rituals 115 The Cybernetics “Scandal” 118 Serial Reproduction of Criticism 126 Computers as “Mathematical Machines” of the Cold War 131 The Military Definition of Computing: Technology without Ideology 142 Soviet Computers: A State Secret or a “Display Technology”? 150 4 Cybernetics in Rebellion 153 Soviet Science in Search of a New Language 153 Soviet Computers: Declassified and Deified 155 The Computer as a Paragon of Objectivity 161 Soviet Philosophy between Scylla and Charybdis 163 The Newspeak Defense of Cybernetics 166 The Military Defense of Cybernetics 173 Cyberspeak Challenges Newspeak 179 Cybernetics and Genetics: A Common Cause 183 Cybernetics Challenges Soviet Philosophy 188 The Legitimation of Cybernetics 193 5 The “Cybernetization” of Soviet Science 199 Cybernetics as a “Trading Zone” 200 The Council on Cybernetics as an Institutional “Umbrella” 204 Biological Cybernetics: Genes as “Units of Hereditary Information” 211 The Mathematical “Axioms of Life” 214 Physiological Cybernetics: The Brain as a Subject of Technology 218 “Man Is the Most Perfect of All Known Cybernetic Machines . .” 224 Cybernetic Linguistics: Making the Study of Language an “Exact Science” 227 From Machine Translation to Linguistic Theory 232 Contents ix The Fate of the Institute of Cybernetics 241 “What Is Cybernetics?” 246 6 Cybernetics in the Service of Communism 253 “Cybernetics in the Service of Communism” 253 The “Dialectical Materialization” of Cybernetics 257 Cybernetics in Fashion 260 From “Military Cybernetics” to “Economic Cybernetics” 264 “Optimal Decision-Making on a National Scale”: Aspirations and Constraints 268 “Optimal Planning”: A Vehicle of Economic Reform or an Obstacle to It? 274 Cybernetics in the Service of the Establishment 279 CyberNewspeak: The “Scientific Management of Society” 285 The End of the Cybernetics Game 288 Conclusion Soviet Cybernetics: Prometheus or Proteus? 293 Cyberspeak as a Carnival Language 293 Cyberspeak as an Instrument of Freedom 296 Cyberspeak as a Universal Language of Capitalism and Communism 300 Notes 305 Index 361 This Page Intentionally Left Blank Preface and Acknowledgements The language of Soviet science always fascinated me. Working on my first course papers after coming from what then was the Soviet Union to the United States for graduate study in 1992, I quickly discovered that the dominant styles of academic discourse in the two countries were vastly different. While American academics preferred precise, unambiguous word- ing, Russians often valued more intricate and vague formulations open to multiple interpretations. Pondering the cultural roots of this phenomenon, I was particularly intrigued by the story of the Soviet cybernetics movement, which made a bold attempt to introduce “precise language” into Soviet science. In this book, I explore intellectual, social, and political ten- sions arising from the clash of different styles of academic discourse. Ironically, this book itself is an amalgam of different styles: I tried to make the narrative both strict and imaginative, both direct and subtle, both impartial and emotional. The story I am about to tell has many dimen- sions, and I tried both to make it comprehensible and to preserve its complexity. From Newspeak to Cyberspeak began its life as a doctoral dissertation in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After defending my first dissertation at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow in early 1992, I could hardly imagine that a few years later I would write another one. When I was in Russia, my research focused on the United States; ironically, when I moved to the United States, I shifted this focus to Soviet science and technology. This book is the result of my geographical, cultural, professional, and linguistic transition into a new world. At the same time, this book is about the world I left: the country which since disappeared and the circle of Soviet intelli- gentsia which since dissipated into networks of post-Soviet intellectuals. xii Preface and Acknowledgements I still love that old world, but my feelings, like my thoughts and dreams, are now expressed in English. My life changed after a fateful meeting with Loren Graham in Moscow in January of 1991, when he came to the Institute for the History of Natural Science and Technology to meet with young Russian historians. His great curiosity, vast erudition, and originality of thought have become my primary source of intellectual challenge and personal delight. As his research assistant for many years afterward, I benefited both from his material support and from his friendly advice. He encouraged me to come to the United States and did everything he could to ease my cultural shock. As my dissertation advisor, he trusted me to work in my own style, at my own speed, and never expected less than my best efforts. Finally, Loren himself has become for me a model of creativity and integrity in scholar- ship and in life. It was my privilege to meet and work with many colleagues and friends, whose intellectual fire and hearty attitude made my work on this topic a pleasure. Members of my dissertation committee—Jed Buchwald, Tom Hughes, and Elizabeth Wood—sacrificed much time and effort trying to make my thoughts clearer for me. Jed not only allowed me to omit mathematical formulas from my text but even gave some advice on how to make the narrative more engaging. Tom posed pointed questions that set me on the right track. Elizabeth opened for me a whole new perspective on Soviet history and on “the Soviet language,” making me reexamine many con- ventional assumptions. I am also profoundly grateful to many American and Russian colleagues and friends who read drafts of various dissertation and book chapters and journal articles and provided useful comments and criticisms: Pnina Abir-Am, Mikhail Arkadiev, David Mindell, Anne Fitzpatrick, Hugh Gusterson, David Hounshell, Paul Josephson, Lily Kay, Alexei Kojevnikov, Nikolai Krementsov, Miriam Levin, Andy Pickering, Silvan Schweber, Mark Solovey, John Staudenmaier, SJ, and Jerôme Segal. I also benefited from personal and electronic communication with Mark Adams, Mario Biagioli, Chris Bissell, David Bloor, Nathan Brooks, Carl Caldwell, Andrew Jenks, Yale Richmond, James Schwoch, Asif Siddiqi, and Douglas Weiner. I am especially indebted to the reviewers of my manuscript for the MIT Press—Paul Edwards, Peter Galison, and David Holloway— who not only refused anonymity but also actively helped me revise the manuscript by providing frank and detailed criticism and extremely valuable Preface and Acknowledgements xiii suggestions. My special thanks to my editor, Larry Cohen, whose gentle support and guidance allowed me to survive the ordeal of major manuscript revisions. This study greatly benefited from my interviews and correspondence with people who were personally involved in the Soviet cybernetics movement: the chemist Iurii Adler, the linguist Vladimir Alpatov, the philosopher Boris Biriukov, the mathematician Akiva Iaglom, the psychologist Mikhail Iaroshevskii, the mathematician Iakov Khurgin, the mathematician Ol’ga Kulagina, the

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