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Soviet Union [USSR] Computers
After Gorbachev's accession to power, the leadership
promulgated a new series of telecommunications and computerization
goals. Some of those efforts had already been incorporated into the
Twelfth Five-Year Plan (1986-90). They included a universal
implementation of computers and data bases throughout the economy
and an all-union computer modernization and training program aimed
at the younger generation. In 1988 Western estimates put the number
of computers at 30,000 mainframes and 70,000 smaller computers. In
1985 a law requiring ninth and tenth graders to learn computer
fundamentals was introduced. In the Twelfth Five-Year Plan, the
leadership declared its goal to furnish high schools with at least
500,000 computers by 1990, representing 45 percent of national
computer production. By the year 2000, the leadership projected
that 5 million computers would be distributed throughout the
schools. The Soviet Union developed a copy of the Apple II computer
(called the Agat) and International Business Machines personal
computer clones. In addition, the Soviet Union developed the Janus
with Hungary and the MMS-16 with the German Democratic Republic
(East Germany). All of these computer models, however, encountered
production problems.
Achievements in computer technology may have benefited the
national economy, especially industry and the military, but they
also may have imperiled the leadership's ability to control access
to information. The leadership's control of information was likely
to be further reduced by a continuing rise in the number of VCRs,
access to direct-broadcast satellite transmissions, and access to
Western data networks that managers and scientists desired. Despite
measures to suppress the dissemination of mass information, the
regime faced a dilemma. It could not expect to compete with the
West unless it modernized its technology and improved its computer
facilities, yet it wanted to maintain strict controls over data
networks and personal computer use.
Data as of May 1989
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