Academician

Glushkov's Life's
Work"
Many ideas considered innovative today often have a long
history of both success and failure. This is how the history of the
Nation-wide Automated Economics Control System (Russian:
OGAS) developed as well. Viktor Mikhailovich Glushkov called
this machine his "life's work on August 24, 1973, when
celebrating his 50th birthday. At the time, he was full of life and
confident of achieving his audacious plan to build a nation-wide
control system to oversee the USSR's economy. A machine such
as OGAS does not exist even today, and was almost
inconceivable in the 1960s when Glushkov began designing it.
He was the first to see the potential of a powerful computerized
system to do such a task; however, despite the initial enthusiasm
towards the idea, OGAS was never completed.
Viktor M. Glushkov
The name of the Academician Viktor Mikhailovich
Glushkov is most usually associated with cybernetics,
computer technologies, and mathematics. However,
despite such a diversity of interests, Glushkov's main focus
was always the global task of computerization and
informatization of human society. He was undisputedly the
brightest figure in this area in the former Soviet Union in
the 1960s-70s. V.M. Glushkov became the founder of
information technology in the USSR; OGAS was to be its
centerpiece.

UA EN RU
Stories Personalities Video
http://uacomputing.com/stories/ogas/
Page 1 oI 10
t would be difficult to sum up the man's life and work in
one book, let alone one article. Glushkov did though
manage to sum up much in his memoirs his
"confessions, as he called them as recorded by his
daughter Olga during the last nine days of his life. These
memoirs are a concise but comprehensive account of
Glushkov's life and work, which was rich with important
events, including the founding and development of the
institute he created, developing its glorious young staff,
and most of all OGAS. t is these recollections that form
the background to this story.
t began in 1956, with the publication of the first Soviet
book on computer technologies, "Electronic digital
machines by A.. Kitov. According to Glushkov, it was this
book that first introduced him to the basics of computer
operation as well as the potential for their use. t wasn't
until much later that he learned about Kitov's subsequent
fate.
As it turned out, in 1959 Kitov wrote a memo to the leader
of the USSR Nikita Khrushchev addressing the issue of
developing computing technologies, which played a major
role in preparing the decree of the Central Committee of
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Council
of Ministers of the USSR "On acceleration and expansion
of production of computing machines and their
implementation in the national economy.
nspired by this decree, Kitov prepared a report for the
Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union, in which he proposed to create a unified automated
control system for the armed forces and the national
economy, based on a common network of computing
centers created and serviced by the Ministry of Defense of
the USSR. A special committee of the Ministry headed by
Marshal K.K. Rokossovskiy was created especially to
consider this proposal. The report's criticism of the current
state of affairs and proposals for fundamental changes to
A..Kitov
in 1959 Kitov wrote a memo to
the leader of the USSR Nikita
Khrushchev addressing the issue
of developing computing
technologies, which played a
major role in preparing the
decree of the Central Committee
of the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union and the Council of
Ministers of the USSR "On
acceleration and expansion of
production of computing
machines and their
implementation in the national
economy".
http://uacomputing.com/stories/ogas/
Page 2 oI 10
the control system used in the Ministry of Defense and
high levels of government provoked a negative reaction
from the committee. Kitov was expelled from the
Communist Party and ordered to vacate the position of
Head of the Computing Center #1 of the Ministry of
Defense.
Despite this extreme reaction, Kitov remained true to his
ideas, and in 1961, just before the 22nd Congress of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he published a new
article, calling for the creation of a control system for the
national economy based on the conceptofa nation-wide
network of computing centers. However, the only attention
it received came from abroad; the American journal
Operations Research published an extensive positive
review of the article.
V.M. Glushkov met Kitov in early 1960s, when he worked
as the Executive Director of the Computing Center of the
Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Despite knowing that
Kitov was being prosecuted for his countless insistent
letters, Glushkov found the courage to continue his work
on the Nation-wide automated control system (OGAS)
himself, and appointed Kitov his assistant for this project.
n fact, the idea to create OGAS came to Glushkov even
before he came across Kitov. He shared this idea with the
President of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, who
in turn introduced him to the Chairman of the Council of
Ministers A.N. Kosygin. Kosygin approved Glushkov's
project, and the scientist took to the task with enthusiasm.
Victor M.Glushkov (to the right),
Mstislav V.Keldysh
http://uacomputing.com/stories/ogas/
Page 3 oI 10
The USSR had a planned economy, where all physical
resource funds listed in the National Plan were
redistributed by 20-30 subdivisions with roughly 500 staff
members. The USSR's economy, colossal in size, was
very difficult to plan precisely using only manual calculation
methods. Additionally, the plan underwent constant
modifications throughout the year in order to adjust for
changing circumstances. Therefore it became clear that it
was impossible to coordinate all the planning and
economic controls without the use of computers.
Glushkov was aware of this, and during 1963 visited
around 100 plants and organizations of varied
specializations ranging from industrial plants and mines to
state farms. He then spent a week at the Central Statistics
Administration, where he studied the control chain from
regional offices to the Central Administration itself.
Glushkov also spent much time studying the operations of
the State Planning Committee. Soon, the number of
organizations he visited reached 1,000. These experiences
gave Glushkov an extremely thorough understanding of
the national economy of the USSR as a whole, from the
lowest level of authority to the top, enabling him to
recognise the system's peculiarities, challenges, and
instances where computing technologies could make a
difference.
The first draft project for the Unified nation-wide network of
computing centers (Russian: EGSVC) was created as
early as 1964. Glushkov proposed a system to help the
country's authorities control the economy of the entire
Soviet Union at all levels of the hierarchy, all in real time
using a network of computing centers. The project implied
a complete restructuring of the entire system of control,
planning, and economic forecasting.
The submitted project suggested the creation of 100
computing centers in the biggest industrial cities and
economic centers, connected by broadband
communication channels. These centers would be spread
across the entire country, and service around 20,000 large
industrial plants and ministries as well as small
enterprises. The presence of a distributed databank and
the possibility of addressless to any information from any
branch of the system (after verification of access
privileges) was the distinguishing feature of the system. A
number of proposals regarding data security were also
included.
However, after the committee reviewed the project, very
little of it was left. The budget of 5 billion rubles for 10
years and the need to prepare over 300,000 highly skilled
The first draft project for the
Unified nation-wide network of
computing centers (Russian:
EGSVC) was created as early as
1964.
The submitted project suggested
the creation of 100 computing
centers in the biggest industrial
cities and economic centers,
connected by broadband
communication channels.
Glushkov's plans were not
fulfilled, and eventually his rival,
the Central Statistics
Administration rose to be in
charge of the State Economic
http://uacomputing.com/stories/ogas/
Page 4 oI 10
specialists for the project forced the committee to cancel
many projects. The practical implementation of EGSVC
was limited to creating a number of more basic objects like
the Management nformation and Control Systems (MCS)
and the Automated Manufacturing Process Control
Systems (Russian: ASUTP). Their functions were limited to
industrial process automation and statistical information
collection, in addition to document control in some
organizations. This fell far short of the original vision of
automation for the entire planning and control system.
Thus, Glushkov's plans were not fulfilled, and eventually
his rival, the Central Statistics Administration rose to be in
charge of the State Economic Administration
computerization project. As a result, the focus of the
project shifted to improving the Administration's work flow.
There were other reasons that prevented the
implementation of Glushkov's vision. n large part, it was
the fault of the State Planning Committee, by way of its
cumbersome bureaucratic apparatus. The heads of its
regional and branch administrations were not interested in
receiving accurate information about their performance,
not to mention unprepared to receive and process
economic information. Secondly, implementation of such a
large project required large expenditures. Thirdly, the
process of in-line data input was still imperfect and
necessitated additional training for the staff.
Statistics departments and some of the planning
department branches were still using computing-analytical
machines from 1939, while in the US the comparable
authorities had already switched to the new generation of
computers. Before 1965, the Americans were developing
two lines of computing machines: science research
machines and economics machines. These first merged in
the machines made by BM. n contrast, the USSR only
had science research machines because nobody cared to
develop computers for economics; thus, there was nothing
to merge. While Glushkov attempted to spark computer
designers' interest in the necessity of such machines, he
managed to persuade neither B.. Rameev (head designer
of "Ural) nor V.V. Przhiyalkovskiy (designer of the "Minsk
computer series).
charge of the State Economic
Administration computerization
project.
http://uacomputing.com/stories/ogas/
Page 5 oI 10
Starting in 1964, leading economists like Liberman, Belkin,
Birman and others began to speak out openly against
Glushkov. Despite this, the Chairman of the Council of
Ministers A.N. Kosygin, being a very practical man,
decided to hear him out and weigh the potential costs.
Glushkov stated openly that the OGAS project was more
complex than the space and nuclear programs combined,
because it would affect every administrative branch:
industry, trade, planning, control and more. However,
according to his calculations, the system would pay for
itself within 5 years of operation.
Still, the country's leadership decided that simple
economic reform would suffice, and cost less. Glushkov
and OGAS were put aside. Not much later, First Secretary
of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union, P. Shelest, summoned Glushkov and
ordered him to stop OGAS propaganda and instead focus
on lower-level systems.
Expecting this, Glushkov and his team at the nstitute of
Cybernetics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian
SSR began working on the "Lviv system a MCS for use
at the Lviv television plant "Elektron (today, a more
modern term "Enterprise Resource Planning Systems or
"ERP-systems is used to describe such systems). The
Lviv MCS was the first system in the USSR used at a
plant with large-scale production. The history of the system
began in 1965. Glushkov attended a conference organized
by the regional national economy department in Lviv,
where he gave a speech promoting automated control
systems and explained how they work. The Director of the
television plant S.O. Petrovskiy gave the scientist an
opportunity to create such a system at his plant and
promised cooperation. Glushkov, excited by the chance to
create a first-of-its-kind machine, completed the project
within 2 years.
After completing the "Lviv system, the nstitute of
Cybernetics went on to build an even more complex
system "Kuntsevo for the Kuntsevo radio manufacturing
plant.
n the late 1960s, new information emerged about
American attempts to build an information network.
Apparently, they completed a draft project for several such
networks in 1966, 2 years after Glushkov's original OGAS
proposal. The launch of ARPANET, which would connect
computers in several American cities, was planned for
1969. As a result, the Soviet leadership decided to return
to the OGAS idea, and created another high-level
committee, which now included the Minister of Finance,
Glushkov stated openly that the
OGAS project was more complex
than the space and nuclear
programs combined, because it
would affect every administrative
branch: industry, trade, planning,
control and more.
The Lviv MICS was the first
system in the USSR used at a
plant with large-scale production.
http://uacomputing.com/stories/ogas/
Page 6 oI 10
Minister of nstrument-building, etc. This committee was
tasked with making a decision about the creation of OGAS.
n the new version of the project, Glushkov shifted
emphasis from core issues to implementation
mechanisms. He proposed to create a State committee on
OGAS design control, and a central scientific center
including 10-15 existing institutes. Most importantly, he
proposed that one of the members of the Politburo be
made responsible for the projects.
At the hearing on OGAS, where neither Brezhnev nor
Kosygin were present, the Politburo expressed major
objections toward the project. This is how Glushkov
himself described it in his "Confessions:
"Suslov led the hearing. After Kirillin spoke, had the
chance to present the idea. My speech was short. t
provoked many questions, but Glushkov answered all of
them. "Then Kosygin's assistants were invited to speak.
Baybakov was first, and he not only supported me, but
also emphasized the importance of the project and
explained how the resources needed for implementation
could be procured.
"Minister K.B. Rudnev signed the document, but
commented negatively, said that it was premature to sign
it. Garbuzov, Minister of Finance made a speech worth
recounting.
He entered the stage and addressed Mazurov, Kosygin's
first assistant. He said that, well, he went to Minsk as
directed, in order to examine the poultry farms. At the so-
and-so farm, the workers designed a computing machine
on their own. laughed out loud. He shook a finger at me
and said, "You, Glushkov, shouldn't laugh, we are
discussing a serious issue. However, Suslov interrupted
him, "Comrade Garbuzov, you are not the chairman here,
and it's not up to you to control the proceedings of a
Politburo hearing. He shrugged, and self-confidently
continued, "The machine can perform three programs;
turns on music when the hen lays an egg, turns lights on
and off, and so on. This increased egg production at the
farm. So he suggested that first we should implement
these machines at all the poultry farms in the Soviet Union,
and only then could we even begin thinking about silly
projects like a nation-wide system.
So someone introduced a counter-suggestion, which
significantly decreased the level of the system. State
control was replaced by Head Administration of computing
technologies at the State committee for science and
technology; the central scientific center by the All-Union
http://uacomputing.com/stories/ogas/
Page 7 oI 10
Scientific Research nstitute for issues of organization and
control; etc. The main task remained intact, but became
more technical, and focused on the Nation-wide computing
center network. The economic dimension, the
mathematical model development for OGAS and the rest
was phased out.
Toward the end of the hearing, Suslov came forward to
say, "Comrades, perhaps we are making a mistake by not
accepting the project in full; however, it is so revolutionary
a change that it is difficult for us to implement at this time.
Let us try it this alternative, and see how it goes. Then he
asked not Kirillin but me, "What do you think? said,
"Mikhail Andreevich, can tell you one thing, that if we
don't do this now, by the late 1970s the Soviet economy
will face serious problems that will force this issue to re-
emerge. However, my opinion was ignored, and the
counter-suggestion was accepted.
After the directives by the XXV assembly about
OGASwere published, strange assaults on Glushkov
began. For example, as he remembered it, in 1970 when
he was returning from Montreal to Moscow on the l-62
plane, the experienced pilot felt something was wrong
when they were already flying over the Atlantic and
returned. t turned out that someone added something to
the fuel mix. Glushkov landed safely, but the rationale and
perpetrators of the sabotage remain unknown.
Behind the scenes other intrigues took place. Minister of
Finance Garbuzov managed to set Kosygin, who originally
supported OGAS, against Glushkov. He told Kosygin that
the State Committee would become an organization that
would check the activity of Kosygin and the Council of
Ministers, and thus should never be allowed.
n 1972, the All-Union conference, headed by Kirilenko,
took place. t finalized the shift toward manufacturing
process control. The aim was to slow the development of
automated control systems. "OGAS is done for said
Glushkov's opponents.
During the preparations for the XXV Assembly of the
CPSU, the word "OGAS was taken out of the text of the
decision. Glushkov wrote a memo for the Central
Committee proposing to create branch control systems,
which could later be merged into OGAS. This suggestion
was accepted.
Viktor Mikhailovich also began a media campaign for the
creation of OGAS. The editor of "Pravda supported this
idea. After the article "For the entire country was
published, Glushkov finally felt hope that OGAS could see
if we don't do this now, by the
late 1970s the Soviet economy
will face serious problems that
will force this issue to re-emerge"
"OGAS is done for" said
Glushkov's opponents.
http://uacomputing.com/stories/ogas/
Page 8 oI 10
the light of the day. After all, "Pravda was a branch of the
Central Committee, which meant that the article was
approved. However, this was not to be.
Y.E. Antipov, deputy chairman of the Military-industrial
committee of the USSR and a supporter of OGAS
commented, "The planned economy of the former USSR
allowed us to create the most effective system of economic
control. Understanding this, Glushkov made his bet on
OGAS. According to experts' estimates, the Soviet control
system was three times as cheap as the American system,
at the same level of GDP. The decision not to approve
OGAS was the biggest strategic mistake of our leadership
and our society.
As a result, Glushkov was like a prophet "not welcomed in
his town. He was misunderstood and forgotten.
During those difficult times, D.F. Ustinov, Minister of
Defense supported Glushkov. He suggested the scientist
implement the idea of OGAS partially, in the defense
branches of the industry. The branches being well-
organized, it was easy to create a number of effective
automated control systems for them in a very short time.
However, Glushkov's opponents continued to plot against
him. His automated control systems were declared
ineffective and to cause financial loss. While in a limited
number of cases this was true, due to poor understanding
and use of the systems, the reports were exaggerated and
presented as the last word. This in turn resulted in the
policy of denial of accelerated computerization and
informatization of the society. Just as in cybernetics,
Glushkov's opponents managed to achieve temporary
success, which was crippling despite his best efforts.
Victor M.Glushkov (in the
center) at the meeting in Tula
with head designers of
computer system for military
enterprises. OGAS did not die
away yet! 1980.
According to experts' estimates,
the Soviet control system was
three times as cheap as the
American system, at the same
level of GDP. The decision not to
approve OGAS was the biggest
strategic mistake of our
leadership and our society".
http://uacomputing.com/stories/ogas/
Page 9 oI 10
Another new and unexpected opponent was Glushkov's
worsening health. During his last days of life, Ustinov's
assistant came to him and asked if they could help him in
any way. "Send me a tank! he responded furiously,
remembering the wall of bureaucracy and
misunderstanding he never managed to breach. On the
morning of January 30, 1982, the great scientist's heart
stopped beating.
Academician Glushkov was ahead of his time; the state
and society were not ready to receive OGAS when he
proposed it. This was the scientist's tragedy, as he did not
want to accept that others could not comprehend
something that for him, was self-evident.
More information on ukrainiancomputing.info
Uacomputing.com All rights reserved, 2012
http://uacomputing.com/stories/ogas/
Page 10 oI 10