The following article comes from the Alpha Factory Research Institute, written by Chen Siwen
Why did an industrial system with excellent personnel, rich resources, abundant reserves, and a leading level disappear almost without a trace in just 20 years?
- Article Information -
The author of this article is Chen Siwen. Originally published by "Alpha Factory Research Institute (ID: alpworks)", Digital Enterprise is authorized to publish. Original title: "Guns and Semiconductors: The Last World War of Technology"
April 12, 1961, was a day of frustration for Americans.
While Washington was still asleep, radio stations in Moscow, far away in the Soviet Union, began to broadcast the classic red song "How vast and vast our motherland" - followed by an announcement that shook the entire human society: the world's first manned spacecraft "Vostok" has been launched by the Soviet Union.
Gagarin, a 27-year-old Soviet Air Force captain, piloted the spacecraft and spent 1 hour and 48 minutes circling the Earth. Schoolchildren, workers, and salesmen all over the Soviet Union stepped out of the house and stared at the sky. They then welcomed the new hero with a 20-gun salute, a sea of flowers, the naming rights of a square, and the title "Columbus of the Soviet Union".
But on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, it is the Americans who gnash their teeth.
At 4 o'clock in the afternoon, President Kennedy attended an angry press conference, in which he reluctantly admitted that the United States had indeed lagged behind in manned aviation. But the frustrated and angry Americans were not ready to let him go. An NASA scientist clenched his fist and cursed loudly, "Kennedy's next election is doomed." Another astronaut complained to reporters:
As long as someone above decided to hurry up two years ago, we would be the ones who sent people up.
Americans, who are well versed in history, are especially outraged, because they are also surrounded by the shame of digging their own graves – it was with the help of the United States that the Soviet Union industrialized forty years ago. "Without us, they can only produce potatoes, and they should be allowed to return waste that has achieved nothing. An American news magazine wrote.
Kennedy's attitude to an exasperated public was ambiguous: "We will go to areas where we can lead, and this will bring more long-term benefits to humanity." But back in the White House, the president told his cabinet, "We're going to invent a race on Earth that will be good for us." ”
A contest that affects the entire human civilization begins.
01
The Beginning of the Challenger
The concern of the Americans was necessary, because in the early sixties there was almost no gap between the USSR and the United States.
In 1960, the Soviet Union's nuclear submarine was launched for sea trials, and it mastered 100 million tons of nuclear weapons and intercontinental missiles, and later a rocket capable of sending satellites and people into space. American physicists also found that the Soviets were keeping up more closely with the nascent electronics and computer industries.
As early as 1946, the United States launched the first digital electronic computer, ENIAC, which could complete 5,000 operations per second, but could only work continuously for 20 hours. Four years later, the Soviets invented MESM, which was slightly less powerful, but had better durability because of the 65% reduction in the number of tubes.
The first computer MESM in the USSR
In 1955, Bell Labs developed the world's first all-transistor computer, TRADIC. Four years later, the Soviets also came up with their own transistor computer, the M-4, and its success, again, was based on basic scientific research. Thanks to the efforts of Soviet scientists - the advent of the Soviet transistor, only a few weeks later than in the United States.
The pursuit of the opposing camp made the Americans feel the pressure again after World War II. The government and academics began to calm down after the shock and study the reasons why the Soviet Union overshadowed the United States. Eventually, they discovered that the unreserved assistance of the United States before the war, and the Soviet Union's post-war promotion of basic research through a national system, were the key to helping the Soviet Union leap to become the second great power.
The Soviet Union in 1928 was a backward agrarian country standing on the ruins of war. Its industrial output value is only one-eighth of that of the United States, more than 90 percent of its cultivation depends on animal power and manpower, light industry is backward, and heavy industry is even more blank.
This means that the Soviet Union is still at the level of the first industrial revolution. Its leaders are desperate to catch up quickly, but this requires long-term technology and financial accumulation, and the shortcut path they ultimately choose is to rely on their own capital and foreign technology to accumulate.
In order to raise the necessary funds for industrial construction, the Soviet Union adopted the method of "subsidizing labor with agriculture", using agricultural collectivization and industrial and agricultural scissors, transferring the profits of agriculture to industry, and exporting grain to foreign countries in exchange for foreign exchange. In the two five-year plans from 1928 to 1938, Soviet agriculture was financed roughly equal to the total amount of state investment in fixed assets during the same period.
The funds used by the Soviet Union for the development of industry were saved by the people of the whole country by tightening their belts.
But money alone was not enough, the Soviet Union also needed to solve the problems of technology and equipment, and looking at the world, the United States was the most advanced industrial country, and it was an external aid that the Soviet Union could never bypass. Its attitude towards the USSR was particularly valuable and important, in the sense that it was the only chance for the economic reconstruction of the USSR.
Fortunately, the Soviet Union got this opportunity that could not be lost. Looking back today, it is almost a perfect coincidence of the current situation and the fortunes of the country, which is enough to make people feel that God blesses the Soviet Union.
At that time, the Soviet Union was politically isolated, but international trade was still free to circulate. More importantly, during the implementation of the first five-year plan of the Soviet Union (1928-1932), the world was in the middle of a global economic crisis.
On one side there is a huge demand for materials and technology, and on the other side there is a surplus of products, engineers and skilled workers. This natural relationship between supply and demand made both the United States and the Soviet Union see the possibility of state-level transactions.
In 1929, 1,123 American companies signed supply contracts with the Soviet Union, followed by Britain and Germany. As a result, during the First Five-Year Plan, the USSR was the country that imported the most machinery and equipment in the world, and in 1931 alone, 50% of the machinery and equipment exported by the United States was sold to the USSR.
In the aid to the Soviet Union, the Americans' delivery can be described as unreserved.
During the construction of the Soviet Union's Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Plant, 450 American engineers worked day and night to create construction drawings accurate to the last screw and nut. The latest American concepts and technologies are used, which makes the Soviet Masteel immediately become the world's largest and most advanced steel enterprise after its completion.
It was a genesis-like construction era, with a steady stream of technology and equipment imported from the United States, and the enthusiasm of all the people of the Soviet Union to work hard, and one record after another was born.
During the two five-year plan periods, the entire equipment and technology of the three major steel plants of the Soviet Union, Magnitogersk, Kuznets, and Zaporozhye came from the United States, and the equipment of the famous Stalingrad Tractor Plant was basically dismantled and assembled from the tractor factories in the United States. The three major automobile factories that formed the framework of the Soviet auto industry were completely copied from the American Ford cars.
All of these projects are inseparable from the support of the United States. During the First Five-Year Plan, 20,000 foreign specialists came to the Soviet Union, distributed in all areas, from the central departments to factories and workshops. Obviously, this is a more valuable asset than supplies and equipment for a country with an illiteracy rate of 50 per cent in 1928.
U.S. aid to the Soviet Union is rare in the history of world technology transfer. It is rarely mentioned by the United States because of its later hostilities, but its role in the Soviet Union is difficult to describe—it is tantamount to teaching the Soviet Union how to build a complete industrial system.
In January 1933, when the First Five-Year Plan of the Soviet Union was completed ahead of schedule, Stalin made a speech: In the past, we did not have a steel industry, a tractor industry, an automobile industry...... Aviation industry, now we have it. After World War II, he expressed himself more directly to the US ambassador to the Soviet Union, Harriman:
"Two-thirds of all the industries in the Soviet Union were built with the help of the United States. ”
02
The road to "rising".
In 1973, the American scholar Sutton published a book, Silent Suicide: U.S. Military Aid to Moscow. As can be seen from the title of the book, Americans panicked. Because the Soviet Union stood on the basis of the first industry in Europe and the second in the world, and began the road of rapid progress with characteristics.
On this path of rapid progress, an important and most overlooked shift has taken place. That is, the Soviet Union's scientific and technological system has quietly transitioned from the initial stage of technology introduction and digestion to a positive cycle of technological self-transformation through basic scientific research.
We can see the hint of this positive cycle effect from the development of the field of semiconductor physics.
Entering the 30s, Soviet scientists began to make great achievements in semiconductor physics. The outstanding physicist Yue Fei pointed out at that time that semiconductor materials would be new materials for electronic technology. He also proposed the concept of "barrier layer" in the study of the conductivity of semiconductors, which is one of the core theories of future integrated circuit research.
In addition to theoretical research, the USSR also made extensive attempts in engineering practice. Even in the late 20s, some scientists began to try to set contacts on the surface of silicon materials and build a triode-like three-electrode system with semiconductors.
This kind of research, which is carried out simultaneously in theory and engineering practice, requires nothing more than three factors: a stable domestic environment, the necessary industrial accumulation, and the investment of resources brought about by high-level policy attention. These factors, in the decade of the 30s and after World War II, the Soviet Union did all of them, the last of which was crucial.
For a country that has just industrialized, the willingness to support basic research is almost insightful. At that time, governments generally recognized that basic research was a thankless task – it was expensive, unpredictable, and even if research results appeared, they were not necessarily of practical value.
However, the leaders of the Soviet Union did not think so, they saw with their own eyes the role of American technology in the process of industrialization of the Soviet Union, understood the truth that science and technology are the primary productive forces, and knew better where the source of technological progress was: without Faraday, Edison would not have invented the electric light, and without Einstein's obscure theory, the atomic bomb would not have become a reality.
Led by this thinking, the Soviet Union increased its investment in basic science and established research institutes throughout the Soviet Union, led by scientists and engineering specialists, responsible for research in subdivided fields. On the education side, it is to supply talents in the field of science and technology with the characteristic Soviet-style school system.
Americans were amazed by the intensity with which the Soviet Union showed, and an American scholar named John Genmuro exclaimed in his writings:
"American schoolchildren attend school for only 180 days a year, but Soviet children attend classes for 213 days. In addition to a full decade of math classes, they must study chemistry for four years, physics for five years, and biology for six years. ”
By the mid-fifties, twice as many scientists and engineers were produced in Soviet schools than in the United States. In a 64-page report of the National Science Foundation, an astonishing fact was noted that 14% of all scientists in the USSR could conduct basic research.
This ushered in an era of prosperity in scientific research for the Soviet Union.
In the emerging electronics and computer industry, the pressure posed by the Soviet Union on the United States was not only due to the proximity of a single performance, but also to the fact that it relied on the accumulation of electronic and semiconductor research fields, so that the Soviet Union's computer design capability was not a single branch, but a number of flowers.
In 1953, the Soviet Union designed the "Arrow" mainframe computer, which could perform 2,000 operations per second, and input and output data through punch jams and tapes. By 1957, a total of 7 "Arrows" had been produced, and together with the MESM developed in 1950, they were used for data computing in aerospace and missile engineering.
"Arrow" mainframe computer
According to the intelligence brought back by the spies, the Soviet Union was even more active than the United States in cutting-edge research on computers and semiconductors. This information later proved to be correct: in 1956, led by Sobolev, an academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences, the Soviet Union successfully developed a ternary computer.
U.S. aid, while endowing the Soviet Union with valuable industrial assets, also saved the Soviet Union from the stage of self-exploration. For more than a decade after World War II, despite the frequent political struggles within the Soviet Union, the leaders consistently maintained a clear understanding of one issue: science and technology are the weapons of a great power, and it comes from basic scientific research.
What is touching is that this understanding of the Soviet leadership is actually outdated.
03
Semiconductors dancing in shackles
In 1944, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote a heartfelt letter to the scientist Vanneval Bush.
"The frontiers of ideas are in front of us, and if they are opened up with the same vision, courage, and drive that we have waged this war, we can create more fulfilling and fruitful jobs and lives. ”
Vaniwal Bush's research on the theory of integrated circuits was the basis for the design of digital integrated circuits in the future, and even in 1945 he proposed the idea of a hypertext link similar to the Internet. He was also directly involved in the Manhattan Project, which was part of the American effort to develop the atomic bomb. Such achievements and qualifications ensure that his words can be taken seriously by the president.
As a result, a report titled "Science, the Endless Frontier" was put on the desk of another US president, Harry Truman. In a word, he hopes that the United States can encourage scientists to explore the most cutting-edge science and technology through huge financial support, and encourage enterprises to continuously transform scientific and technological achievements into applications.
Vaniwar Bush's ideas have almost the same epistemic roots as the Soviet Union's science and technology strategy, but they also have a completely different practical orientation. As we will see later, it is this difference, coupled with the different institutional soil of the United States and the Soviet Union, that makes the United States and the Soviet Union take two different paths in the technological hegemony of semiconductors, and the results obtained by both sides are also in the same vein.
In the decade that followed, Americans did not take Vannewar Bush's recommendations seriously. After the brutal World War II, refrigerators, cars, and televisions were the things they were more happy to pursue, and basic research was not necessary.
This sentiment also pervades the top levels of government. Charles Wilson, who was Secretary of Defense around 1954, even thought basic research was ridiculous, and once publicly ridiculed basic research as nothing more than "why the grass is green and why the potatoes are yellow." ”
After the 60s, the Soviet Union caught up faster and faster in the field of semiconductors and computers.
The balance of power between the two camps seems to be shaking slightly in favor of the Soviet Union. However, in the rapid development of the Soviet scientific and technological system and comprehensive national strength, there are some factors that no one has noticed, which are quietly playing a role: the planned economy.
In 1967, a semiconductor factory in Belarus was worried about one of their medium-voltage circuit breakers, which could not be repaired, and they needed to reinstall one. After determining that it could not be repaired, the deputy director of the business made a request at the party committee of the factory, and after discussion by the party committee, the factory reported the request to the electronic industry administration of Minsk city.
But a simple reload task can be a hassle. This money was a surprise to the Electronics Industry Administration, which was not provided for in the 1967 plan, so it could not be awarded to the factory. As a result, the demand was reported to the Minsk City Planning Commission and the Planning Commission of the Belarusian Republic.
The final solution of the matter was for the Belarusian Planning Commission to make a supplementary clause in the 1967 plan, and at the same time to approve the Minsk City Planning Commission and the Electronic Industry Bureau, which submitted an application to the Minsk City Finance Bureau, and then the Finance Bureau allocated funds to a circuit breaker manufacturer to arrange for the special production of a circuit breaker.
The semiconductor factory finally got the circuit breaker they wanted, but it was three months later.
The layout of the computer industry in the Soviet Union is a typical example of this management system: in order to strengthen the ties between the union republics, the Soviet leadership made a hard distribution of industries up and downstream, Ukraine got the electronic information industry sector, Belarus got the semiconductor industry sector, and the three Baltic countries got processing and assembly plants.
This is clearly a political account, not an economic one. In fact, under the planned economic system, the economic account also has its own set of algorithms:
All construction and scientific research projects are included in the unified state plan; the required funds are allocated and allocated by the state finance; the required materials are uniformly allocated by the commercial and material ministries and commissions; the labor force engaged in production is uniformly trained by the state; the products produced are purchased and coordinated by the state; the profits of enterprises are handed over to the state treasury, and the losses of enterprises are subsidized by the state finance.
This strict and huge management system is like an economic machine with all the procedures set in advance -- the state determines the investment scale, investment structure, and industrial layout at the macro level, and is also responsible for the decision-making and management of projects at the micro level.
The advantage of this system is that it is conducive to concentrating social resources and can do great things with the strength of the whole country, especially in the stage of relative economic backwardness, and by concentrating resources to attack heavy industry and infrastructure construction, the level of social development can be markedly raised.
But its drawbacks are also obvious, in addition to the inefficiency, rigidity and sluggishness we have already seen, it also creates a series of peculiar orientations for the development of the industry. Later, we will see how the semiconductor and computer industries of the Soviet Union are gradually declining under the influence of this orientation.
The signs of this decline began to appear in the late 60s. The first generation of transistor computers in the United States and the Soviet Union was launched only four years apart, but the interval between the introduction of the first generation of integrated circuit computers increased to nine years. From the memoirs of many Soviet scientists and technical officials, it can be seen that they were aware of this difficulty in catching up.
But it's hard for them to change the big picture on their own level. Because the thinking and model of planned economy have been rooted in the blood of this country with the passage of time.
04
Sow the Evil Causes: From a positive cycle to a closed one
In February 1946, a female typist at the U.S. State Department experienced the hardest day of her work. She began her work in the morning to include a return call from the embassy in Moscow, which she eventually found to be 8,000 words.
The author of this reply is George Kennan, a US diplomat in Moscow. As a normal operation, he only had to answer questions to the State Department and give a verdict on whether the USSR would join the World Bank. However, the conceited "Soviet Unionists" believed that the ambassador who disagreed with him was not at home, and that he should clearly explain to the State Department his understanding of the Soviet Union and the measures that the US Government should take.
Kennan's practice of carrying smuggled goods gave rise to the longest telegram in the history of the US State Department, "Kennan's Long Telegram."
Secretary of State Burns was so impressed by the telegram that he immediately asked for it to be circulated within the State Department. Soon after, the cable reached the White House, and Kennan became famous. Six months later, he had his own office next door to the secretary of state, dedicated to long-term U.S. foreign policy.
In this telegram, Kennan's core ideas can be summarized in two parts: the logical roots of what the Soviet Union did, and what the Americans should do.
In Kennan's view, the Soviets' seemingly incomprehensible style of conduct lies neither in the personal character of their leaders nor in their extreme reactions in one place and another. It has its roots in Russia's history as the sense of insecurity that arose after a long period of peace-loving agrarian inhabitants surrounded by murderous nomads, which reached its peak after being attacked by a more powerful and well-organized Nazi Germany.
Based on this, Kennan judged that the Soviet Union would go further and further down the road of isolation from the rest of the world, and maintain its rule by means of isolation, control, and rapid advance.
Years later, the history of the Soviet Union confirmed George Kennan's judgment that the Soviet Union had indeed embarked on the path of self-isolation and strict control internally.
In the shadow of insecurity, the Soviet government's economic policy orientation was very simple and crude: at the macro level, fiscal policy pursued budget balance, monetary policy pursued price stability, and at the micro level, milestone achievements within individual industries, and close coordination and dynamic equilibrium in the division of labor between industries.
In other words, the Soviets completely abandoned the economic theories of supply and demand, value and price in a market economy. What they really like is a tight-knit plan run. Centralized control and allocation of resources, presetting economic goals in advance.
As the scale of the planned economy of the Soviet Union became more and more large, in the 60s, the Soviet Union established the Central Institute of Economic Mathematics of the Academy of Sciences, and in the 70s, the computing centers of various specialized ministries were set up one after another, and the All-Union Computer Center was established on the basis of interconnection. With the help of the modeling and computing power of integrated circuit computers, the Soviet Union succeeded in turning the planned economy into an exact science.
The Soviet electronics industry has since declined. The launch of the world's first manned spacecraft by the Soviet Union meant that it won a complete victory in the space event of the world science and technology competition, which was inseparable from the help of the computer and electronics industries. Its electronics industry is at its peak, and it even seems to be the starting point for its broad future.
But this is actually an inflection point in history.
At the same time that the USSR was rushing into space. A company that will become the world's most famous and powerful company is quietly carrying out a big plan. That company is IBM. In the early 60s, it made a decision to concentrate all the company's forces on the development of integrated circuit computers.
Integrated circuit is the third generation of computer route after the electron tube and transistor, which integrates a series of electronic components such as transistors, resistors, capacitors, and electron tubes on a small or several small semiconductor chips, with low power consumption, small size, and far more performance than before, which is the recognized future direction in the computer industry.
But it's also an unprecedentedly bold plan: if successful, IBM will get a high-performance, full-featured, cross-generation computer. According to IBM's overall plan, it will support scientific computing, business applications and information processing at the same time, which can benefit people throughout the United States and the world.
But the difficulties are also on the bright side, the total investment will reach $5 billion, and the software development alone will require a team of 2,000 engineers. You know, in the early 60s, IBM's annual turnover was just over a billion dollars, which was a big gamble that cost you your life.
For a commercial company, losing this gamble is unbearable. In front of this gambling table, IBM's board of directors stood up and sat down, leaving and looking back, in a dilemma. At this point, one strong hand pressed IBM to the edge of the table, and the other hand handed out a steady stream of chips.
Behind these hands was the U.S. government, determined to defeat the Soviet Union once and for all in this technological race.
05
Soviet semiconductors surrendered on their own initiative
In May 1961, Kennedy delivered a special address on "Urgent National Needs," in which he called for an additional $7 billion to $9 billion over the next five years for the U.S. space program. At Rice University in Houston, he confronted American intellectuals and left a passage:
Many years ago, someone asked George Mallory, a mountaineer who later died on Mount Everest, why he climbed the mountain, and he replied because the mountain was there. Now some people ask why we went to the moon — because the moon is there, because there is new hope for knowledge and peace. ”
As after Pearl Harbor, the United States once again woke up to its national fortunes. It has demonstrated a power that transcends competition in the general sense from the very beginning. A steady stream of money flowed from the Pentagon, the National Science Foundation, and the Treasury to the RAND Corporation, IBM, and the International Telegraph and Telephone Company......
The innovations of these large corporations are backed by federal coffers, and the United States has funded technology investments with government funds that no nation has ever made.
By the 60s, the federal government at all levels in the United States was responsible for 25% of the investment in the national economic activity. The National Science Foundation estimates that federal funding accounts for 90 percent of aerospace research, 65 percent of electrical and electronic equipment research, 42 percent of scientific instruments, 31 percent of machinery, 28 percent of alloys, 24 percent of automobiles, and 20 percent of chemicals.
Vaniwal Bush's idea of an "endless frontier" has finally become a reality after more than a decade of shelf.
The policy orientation of the Americans has objectively formed a pipeline innovation model, in one section of the pipeline, there is sufficient financial support, and at the other end, there is the crazy output of scientists and entrepreneurs in industrial achievements. What is even more valuable is that this kind of achievement can be fully guaranteed by the business:
It can either be commissioned to innovate and become a contract outsourcer for government departments, or it can receive a wide range of orders from the market economy atmosphere of free trade.
In 1964, IBM introduced the IBM-360, the world's first integrated circuit computer. It's a true generational computer, far surpassing the previous generation of transistor computers in terms of hardware performance and compatibility. As soon as it was launched, NASA, the Pentagon, all U.S. commercial banks and airlines became its customers.
IBM360
By the end of 1966, IBM's annual revenue exceeded 4 billion yuan, and its net profit was as high as 1 billion US dollars, making it one of the top ten companies in the United States in one fell swoop, and since then it has begun its hegemony in the world's computer industry.
On the other side of the ocean, the Soviets, who had the best spy organization, learned the news at the first time. Interestingly, while Soviet scientists began to feel anxious, the Soviet industrial authorities were like giants with feet of clay, first deaf and then unimpressed.
It is easy to understand why the authorities had such an attitude - the priority of the Soviet strategy at that time was the space industry, and the role of the electronics industry was to provide guarantees. In this regard, the engineers did a good job to the satisfaction of the leadership, and the existing computers were completely reliable, so it was enough to go down the existing plan.
In addition, the top leaders are not complete laymen, and they know how much it costs IBM to build integrated circuit computers. Unlike the United States, which can rely on the commercial market to make its own blood, every penny they spend on industry has to be taken out of their fiscal pockets. Relying on the income brought by the oil fields, it can barely feed the gold-sucking giant of the aerospace industry.
Now with one more head, what will become of the finances of the Soviets?
Under the established strategic direction, there is no need to support another industry; under the current financial situation, there is no surplus resources to make incremental inputs; under the existing system, the computer industry will not be able to make its own blood, and it will suck up the Soviet finances. In the face of this reality, Soviet scientists had to bow their heads.
From this inflection point, the pace of development of the Soviet electronics industry slowed down significantly.
On April 3, 1973, Martin Cooper, an engineer at Motorola, stood on the streets of Manhattan to test a $15 million mobile communications product that the company had spent a decade developing with brick-like equipment. Since then, mobile phones have begun to enter human life.
But this is only the history written by the victors. Back in 1958, the Soviet engineer Leonid Kupriyanovich invented a lighter and smaller mobile phone, which by 1965 was already working effectively at a distance of 200 km. Unfortunately, the Soviet government had no interest in this study.
Officials thought that for 400 Soviet rubles they could buy a television or a motorcycle, and "the people could just keep the line on the phone." So, it was stopped.
Backwardness is not only reflected in the field of research and development, after the integrated circuit computer has become a trend, the generation of electronic devices is smaller than the generation, and the manual assembly method of the electronics factories in the Soviet Union distributed in the republics has not been able to keep up with the situation, and to produce suitable devices, new equipment, new technicians and a vacuum environment for making silicon crystals are needed.
All of this requires a huge investment and a long period of patience.
At that time, the Soviet leaders happened to have a "smart" discovery: it was cheaper to buy computers from Europe and copy them with money than to develop and manufacture them themselves. As a result, according to the logic of the Westernists of the Qing Dynasty, "it is better to buy ships than to build ships, and it is better to buy guns than to build guns", a batch of imported goods and imitations were transported to the Gorky Automobile Plant and the Stalingrad Tractor Factory.
The technicians who used to do R&D in the research institute are now driven to the workshop and become engineers who repair the machines. For an industry with a strong talent pool and a war ready to fight, choosing to abandon the strategy of competition undoubtedly means that the Soviets took the initiative to raise their hands and surrender.
06
Red flag landing: a long and endless road ahead
The year 1984 in history is not as horrific as it is written in the novel. On the contrary, it was a turbulent and enthusiastic era. In Apple's garage and IBM's office building, the first real personal computers were born.
At the University of Texas, 19-year-old Michael Dell decided to drop out of school and start his own computer company for $1,000; in San Francisco, a husband and wife named Sandy and Leonard signed up for Cisco Systems for five dollars and began working on a small box called a router; in Seattle, Bill Gates set the famous and great vision for the company:
"Put a computer on every desk, every home. ”
Soviet engineers still did not give up, and they soon came up with their own designs - an imitation of the Apple Apple2 and an independent design Micro-80. Although these products are outdated compared to the speed at which their American counterparts iterate, they cannot hide the efforts of Soviet engineers to try to save the day.
Unfortunately, after the Brezhnev era, the Soviet bureaucracy had become a cancer in the country, and the bureaucracy was concerned with villas, cars and promotions, and did not know anything about the development of the industry. Young engineers have neither the means nor the possibility to explain to them what it means to be a man of heaven and earth, and a life for the people.
Nikolai Gershkov, Deputy Minister of the USSR Electronics Industry, said to the designers of the "Micro-80": "Stop, a personal car, a pension and a villa are possible, but a personal computer is not. Do you know what a computer is? It occupies an area of 100 square meters, requires 25 people to maintain, and consumes 30 liters of alcohol per month. ”
In the 80s, when Americans started playing games on Apple computers, a minister in charge said that behind these words, I don't know how much of the 30 liters of alcohol "consumed every month" went into his head.
The so-called national fortune is neither a mathematical probability, nor a mystery in feng shui, nor a providence in the dark. It is a country's and a nation's grasp of the trend, the resources and resilience to the goal, the courage to make sacrifices at critical junctures, and the wisdom of choice.
Together, these things can help a nation survive a crisis and make a country look like God has helped it.
On December 25, 1991, after months of unrest, the red flag was lowered over the Kremlin, and from that day on, the term Soviet Union became history. Three years later, in a Moscow residence, 77-year-old Bashar Lamiev sat in an armchair and stared out the window for a long time.
He was the oldest specialist who had come along with the Soviet computer industry.
It can be said that all the existing scientists in the field of computer science in the Soviet Union are Ramyev's descendants, and they all grew up under his watch. In the past 50 years, he has watched them go from fledgling college students to experts in their fields, watching their myopia deepen and their hair gray.
But now that they're gone, those familiar names are either on the staff lists of IBM, Intel, and Motorola, or they're dying, or they've even gone to heaven.
Yuri Bazlevsky, who invented the "arrow" computer, Avdiev, an academician who broke through the technology of tube miniaturization, Glushkov, who led the development of the MIR series of computers, and Leonid Kupriyanovich, who invented the portable mobile phone...... These names are like withered petals, withered in the bitter autumn winds of the Ural plains.
The dying Lamiev remembered the Elbrus-2 computer launched by the Soviet Union in 1977, which was directly used in the target processing of the Soviet ballistic missile defense system, and was the eyes and ears of the Soviet shield. Who did not believe at that time that the Soviet electronics industry would bloom red flowers all over the world.
He does not forget the pride of Soviet scientists.
But now the situation is that a number of enterprises with computers and computer names have popped up in Russia. None of these companies are really engaged in R&D and production. Rather than spending a decade in a research institute, these new companies are more willing to put effort into trade – just assembling imported parts and changing hands to make money.
After the collapse of the USSR, many scientists could not figure it out. Why has an industrial system with excellent personnel, abundant resources, abundant reserves, and a leading level of proficiency have almost disappeared without a trace in just 20 years? Now, some people are asking on social networks: 70 years ago, the Soviet Union invented the semiconductor computer, why don't we have our own IBM?
Who made the question so difficult, history books are full of correct answers.
07
End
Now on the battlefield of the world's semiconductors, we can no longer hear the voice of Russia's counterattack.
The Blue Line electronics market is Moscow's largest computer market, where Russians can buy the latest Apple, Dell, IBM, and even Lenovo and Haier computers, but it's hard to find Russian brands. Walking around the market, you can meet many young people wearing T-shirts printed with hammers and sickles.
They know computers well, but does anyone still remember the story of that Soviet era?
Resources:
1. "Glory and Dreams", William Manchester
2. Sixty Years of the State Bank of the Soviet Union, Shanghai Economic Research
3. "Overview of Soviet Semiconductor Technology", Hurricane
4. "Russia's Electronics Industry", Yang Jianmei
5. History of the Soviet Union, People's Daily Publishing House
6. Seventy Years of the Development of the National Economy of the Soviet Union, China Machine Press
7. "Twenty Years of the Death of the Party and the Country of the Soviet Union", Feng Jingzhi
8. "The Soviet Union invented semiconductors 70 years ago, why we don't have our own IBM" TASS, Alexander Berezin
9. The Development of the Electronics Industry in the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Zhang Yichao, Zhihu
10. The Soviet Economic Accounting System and China's Planned Economy, Lin Chaochao
11. "What is the Real Planned Economy" Elephant Guild
12. "First in Europe, Second in the World, Why Soviet Industry Grew by Leaps and Bounds in the 30s", The Art of War
13. What was the Soviet Union doing when the United States was developing the computer industry, Liu Huanzhong
Transferred from the public account: South China Intelligent Manufacturing