Bureaucratic and Technological Limitations of Computerization of Planning in the USSR

The article examines attempts to use computers for improving the quality of state economic plan­ning in the USSR in the 1960s–1970s. The initial design of the computer network was subjected to repeated adjustments until it began to be implemented as the Automated System of Planned Calcu­lations of the State Planning Committee of the USSR. The whole process can be divided into stages, which differ both in the nature of the work and in the nature of the prevailing rhetoric about the place of computers in economic management. Based on archival documents, I identify limitations that the developers of the automated system had to consider: the weakness of the hardware and software base, the distrust of the “old” planners, problems of algorithmizing the process of national planning, and the need to enter into political alliances with various ministries and departments. However, with all the forced adjustments to the project, the target image of the future system remained unchanged: a unified and nationwide one, covering all economic ministries and departments. It is concluded that the prevailing point of view on the causes of computerization problems needs to be corrected: the slippage was caused not by the Soviet bureaucracy’s opposition to the very idea of computerization of planning, but by technical and organizational problems that had clearly emerged by the end of the 1960s—in particular, the desire of participants to interpret the idea in the most favorable light for themselves and lead the process of its implementation. The main obstacle to the computerization of public administration, therefore, was the lack of command in the command economy of the USSR.