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Implications of the Information Revolution for Soviet Society

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Implications of the Information Revolution for Soviet Society FINAL REPORT T O NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR SOVIET AND EAST EUROPEAN RESEARC H TITLE : IMPLICATIONS OF THE INFORMATIO N REVOLUTION FOR SOVIET SOCIETY : A PRELIMINARY INQUIR Y AUTHOR : Richard W . Judy and Virginia L . Clough CONTRACTOR : Hudson Institute, Inc . PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR : Hans Heymann, Jr . COUNCIL CONTRACT NUMBER : 801-0 5 DATE : May 198 9 The work leading to this report was supported by funds provided by the National Council for Soviet and East European Research . Th e analysis and interpretations contained in the report are those o f the author . IMPLICATIONS OF THE INFORMATION REVOLUTION FOR SOVIET SOCIETY : A PRELIMINARY INQUIRY by Richard W. Judy and Virginia L. Clough ' ExecutiveSummary : There will be a Soviet information revolution . The questions are what kind will i t be and what will be its implications for Soviet society. These are not easy questions. The nature and implications of the information revolution are still dimly perceived in our ow n society. It would be surprising indeed if we could see them with clarity in Soviet society . The Soviet Union, with its legacies of Russian history and Stalinism, is a society ver y different from our own. It is also a society in profound crisis, a crisis whose severity an d whose perception are both partly consequent to the information revolution . Who can doubt that the Gorbachev reformers are motivated in large part by thei r widespread perception that the USSR is losing the technological race? They know full wel l that one of their most spectacular and fateful losses is occurring in the development an d application of computer and telecommunications technologies whose relevance to militar y Richard W . Judy is a Senior Research Fellow and Virginia L. Clough is a Researc h Associate of Hudson Institute, Indianapolis, Indiana . The research underlying this pape r was supported in part by the National Council for Soviet and East European Research an d assisted by a travel grant from IREX, the International Research & Exchanges Board . The authors gratefully thank other participants in this project for their many contributions , especially Robert W . Clough, Robert W . Campbell, and Hans Heymann, Jr . These an d others who have contributed to our work are absolved from all responsibility for th e contents of this paper, a responsibility which the present authors bear in full measure . i power is increasingly obvious . So, an information revolution of sorts is proceeding also in the Soviet Union . Bu t it is a complex and contradictory phenomenon . In part, it proceeds in response to officia l policy that seeks to define and to channel both the development of the technologies an d the ways in which they are applied . In part, it is formed (many would say deformed) by the unplanned but powerful interplay of bureaucratic interests and other institutional force s that operate in the Soviet system. In part, it is driven by members of the Soviet intelligentsia who increasingly see the close linkage between the information revolution and their longing for freedom and democracy . In part, finally, it generates itself as informatio n about the information revolution makes its way to rank and file Soviet citizens and whet s their appetites to taste it themselves . This paper is a preliminary exploration of the nature and meaning of the informatio n revolution in the Soviet Union . It follows and builds upon an inquiry into the developmen t and application of Soviet computer technology . Earlier phases of the study have focusse d on the technologies themselves and some of their most important applications in the USSR . This paper begins the third phase of our inquiry which is concerned with the meaning o f the Soviet information revolution, i .e ., with the broader implications that transcend technica l details . The paper surveys Soviet views of the nature of the Soviet information revolution . Until the mid-1980s, only the official Soviet vision of the computer and society could b e discerned with relative clarity from the pages of Soviet publications . And even that officia l vision had to be teased from oblique statements and inferred from observed behavior . Soviet officialdom has behaved as if there were even when there may have been none . ii For many years, the notions of cybernetics and ideas associated with it were tabo o with Soviet officialdom . After the taboo was lifted around 1960, explicit ideas of how th e computer ought to fit into Soviet society began to appear . Some grand vision of the future computerized Soviet society has gained popularity in each of the last three decades, at least among certain members of the technica l intelligentsia. In the 1960s, it was the "State System of Computer Centers" (GSVTs) whic h was to be a pyramid of computers with those of the enterprises at the bottom and a gian t central machine in Moscow at the top. The vision of the GSVTs was fatally flawed fro m the start. There is no evidence that the top political or economic leaders ever took i t seriously and, in any case, the vision never took a step toward reality . Although never totally extinguished, this vision is dimming asymptotically toward invisibility . The view of the computer's place in society in the minds of the Soviet technica l intelligentsia and officialdom from the 1970s and into the mid-1980s held it to be a number cruncher, a data processor, and the engine of automation . Indeed, nearly every compute r application was construed as automation of some kind . This view culminated in late 1983 when the State Committee on Science an d Technology, Gosplan, and the Academy of Sciences developed a plan for the use o f microprocessors in Soviet society. In this plan, the technology's main role would be as th e controller of programmable machine tools, production processes, robots, and smar t weapons . A second major role in which Soviet thinkers cast the computer was that o f CAD/CAM (computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing) . Third place i n importance went to the use of microcomputers in research, education, and other unspecifie d information systems. "Personal computing" warranted no mention in this plan of 1983 . Ideas began to change in the mid-1980s . A rapidly evolving perception of the nature and significance of the information age is apparent in the writings of several prominen t Soviet intellectuals. This new vision of the Soviet "information society" and the process o f its formation is articulated most clearly and forcefully by Academician Andrei Ershov . He portrays a strikingly coherent picture of the information future toward which he believe s human societies, emphatically including the USSR, must head if they are to be considere d advanced . According to this new view, the entire world is moving rapidly toward th e information society . If the Soviet Union chooses to stand aside, it will be at the cost of becoming a global laggard . The social payoffs of this process are seen to be higher labo r productivity, wider use of materials-conserving technologies, more rapid cycles of design an d construction, and improvement in the quality of services, especially in trade and medicine . Explicit mention of military enhancement is rarely made information is frequently to as a "strategic resource . Advocates of new view hold that certain domestic preconditions exist for the Sovie t information revolution . 1. The organization of mass production and implementation of computers an d communications facilities . 2. The creation of a software and knowledge base industry in the USSR . 3. A transformation of how people access and handle information in the Sovie t Union. Bureaucratic intermediaries between the information and the people who use i t must be greatly reduced or eliminated. The concept of individual initiative must b e throroughly rehibilitated. Freedom of information for all citizens is deemed necessary fo r iv the information revolution to proceed . The debate between the "automaters" and the advocates of the "information society " has become a part of the larger debate about the future of Soviet society . The paper examines the extent of personal computing in the USSR and the explores the modialities by which a popular computer culture may be emerging in that country . The conclsion is that Soviet consumers and professionals will take to computers with alacrit y when and if more and better technology becomes available at workplaces, in the schools , and in retail stores. In short, the supply will create its own demand. The appetite will b e further whetted when and if the flow of news about information technology in the Sovie t media, whether it be reportage or advertising, becomes more interesting and more skillfull y slanted toward a non-technical audience . As these things occur, the problem will b e "merely" one of people mobilizing sufficient purchasing power to turn their desires int o effective demand . The paper examines some previously published Western conjectures about the natur e of the Soviet information revolution and finds that they have not taken full account o f recent developments. Another section explores a sample of Western opinions concernin g problems and meaning of the computer revolution in the West . The concluding section of this paper poses and adduces tentative answers to a serie s of question about the economic, political, and social impacts of the information revolutio n in Soviet society . Concerning economic applications, it is argued that the contributions of the informatics technologies to date have been quite modest . I lopes for major payoffs in th e automation of goods production have not been dashed but neither have they been crowned with anything approximating their anticipated successes. Looking ahead, perestroika and computerized automation may be regarded as joint and highly complementary inputs int o the future Soviet economy .
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