Who he is and his times
Viktor Mikhailovich Glushkov was born on 24 August 1923 in Rostov-on-Don and began as an algebraist: in 1948 he graduated from the Novocherkassk Industrial Institute, and in 1955 he defended his doctoral dissertation on topologically locally nilpotent groups — work connected with Hilbert's fifth problem. In 1956 he moved to Kyiv, and from December 1957 he headed the Computing Centre of the Ukrainian SSR Academy of Sciences, which in December 1962 was transformed into the Institute of Cybernetics. Glushkov remained director of the institute until his death on 30 January 1982; from 1962 he was also vice-president of the Ukrainian SSR Academy of Sciences, in 1961 he became a full member (academician) of it, and in 1964 a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
His path to economics ran through cybernetics — the science of control and communication in machines, organisms and society, which in the USSR was branded as bourgeois in the early 1950s and rehabilitated by the end of the decade. The idea of a nationwide network of computer centres was first put forward by the military engineer Anatoly Kitov: on 7 January 1959 he sent a letter to N. S. Khrushchev, and in the autumn of the same year a detailed project known as the “Red Book”; the proposal found no support among the leadership. Glushkov was familiar with Kitov's ideas and in the early 1960s put them back on the agenda, this time on behalf of academic science.
The timing was right. According to the historian S. Gerovitch, Khrushchev's reform of management through the regional economic councils (sovnarkhozy) had by 1963 not reduced but almost tripled the administrative apparatus, while the growth rates of industrial output declined from 1959 to 1964. At the Central Committee plenum in November 1962 Khrushchev called for borrowing “rational” methods of management, and cybernetics became a fashionable word. It was at this very moment that Glushkov received the assignment that defined the second half of his life.
Under Glushkov the Institute of Cybernetics became one of the country's largest centres of computer engineering and programming. In 1966 it produced the small computer MIR-1 for engineering calculations; in 1967 the Lvov system — the first automated control system in the USSR for an enterprise with mass production — was launched at the Elektron television plant in Lviv; and in 1974 the Encyclopedia of Cybernetics (Entsiklopediya kibernetiki) was published under Glushkov's editorship. These achievements matter for understanding the history of OGAS: Glushkov had a team capable of building systems and experience of introducing them at factories.
Main ideas
The full name of the project was the Nationwide Automated System for the Collection and Processing of Information for the Accounting, Planning and Management of the National Economy. An automated control system (ASU, avtomatizirovannaya sistema upravleniya) was understood at the time as a complex of computers, communication lines and programs that collects data on the work of an enterprise or industry and prepares calculations for decisions. OGAS was to unite such systems into a single network so that planning bodies would receive reliable information quickly and without multi-stage paper reporting, in which data were distorted and became outdated.
The technical foundation of the project was the Unified State Network of Computer Centres (EGSVTs). As Gerovitch describes it, the draft of the network envisaged 100–200 large centres in industrial cities, linked to one another by broadband channels, and up to 20,000 small centres in agencies and at large enterprises. The network itself was to support a distributed data bank, which a user with the appropriate authority could access from any location after an automatic check of access rights. A joint article with Academician N. P. Fedorenko, published in Voprosy Ekonomiki in 1964, describes a three-tier scheme: tens of thousands of local centres, 30–50 intermediate-level centres and a single head centre serving the government.
The most radical part of the original plan was a moneyless system of payments for the population: wages and purchases were to be handled by electronic records, without cash. In his memoirs Glushkov writes that the President of the USSR Academy of Sciences, M. V. Keldysh, approved the concept except for this part, which in his opinion would stir up unnecessary emotions and should not be mixed up with planning. Glushkov removed it from the main project and sent a separate memorandum to the Central Committee of the CPSU, but no decision on it was ever taken. Today this idea is often called a precursor of electronic payments, but the author himself justified it by the Marxist ideal of a society without money.
In the 1970s the emphasis shifted from the network to models. In the monograph Macroeconomic Models and Principles of Building OGAS (Makroekonomicheskie modeli i printsipy postroeniya OGAS, 1975) and in works on the DISPLAN system (a dialogue system for planning calculations), Glushkov and his colleagues described continuous planning: as new data arrive, forecasts and plans are recalculated, and the system shows surplus and scarce resources, so that a plan with a shortfall is regarded as unbalanced. DISPLAN was to combine the input–output balance — a table showing how much of each industry's output is consumed in producing the output of all the others — with programme-and-goal management and to use both monetary and physical indicators.
What became of the ideas in practice
According to Glushkov's memoirs, the task of building OGAS was set for him by the First Deputy Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, A. N. Kosygin, in November 1962; it was Keldysh who brought him to Kosygin. The resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of 21 May 1963 on improving the management of the introduction of computer technology gave the project an administrative framework, and Glushkov headed an interagency council and a commission that included N. P. Fedorenko, the head of the Central Statistical Administration (TsSU) V. N. Starovsky and the First Deputy Minister of Communications A. I. Sergiychuk. In June 1964 the project was submitted to the government, and in November 1964 Glushkov presented it at a meeting of the Presidium of the Council of Ministers. The TsSU objected to the project as a whole, and the decision came down to entrusting its further development to the TsSU itself together with the Ministry of the Radio Industry.
An archival study by A. V. Kuteynikov gives a later date: in March 1965 Glushkov presented the “Preliminary Draft Design of the EGSVTs” (Predeskizny proekt EGSVTs), and in May 1965 it was rejected, with the agencies instructed to revise the materials; the sources disagree about the dates of this stage. Be that as it may, in 1965 the leadership chose the Kosygin–Liberman reform, which its supporters described as almost free of cost. Glushkov himself estimated the cost of OGAS at about 20 billion roubles over three five-year plans and admitted to Kosygin that the programme was more complex than the space and nuclear programmes combined, although he expected the investments of the first five-year plan to pay for themselves by its end.
The 1966 resolution was, in Gerovitch's assessment, a typical bureaucratic compromise: construction of the nationwide network was entrusted to the TsSU, while the ministries were allowed to set up their own computer centres. The TsSU insisted on a territorial network, Gosplan on a network following its own sectoral structure, and while the dispute went on, 414 control systems were built in 1966–1970 without any connection between them. In the autumn of 1970, against the background of news about the launch of the American ARPANET, Glushkov secured a new review through the Central Committee Secretary A. P. Kirilenko; a commission was set up under the Chairman of the State Committee for Science and Technology (GKNT), V. A. Kirillin, with Glushkov as his deputy, and the only one who did not sign the proposals was the Minister of Finance, V. F. Garbuzov.
The decisive meeting of the Politburo took place, according to Peters, on 1 October 1970 (according to other sources, on 30 September) in the absence of L. I. Brezhnev, who was in Baku, and of A. N. Kosygin, who had flown to Cairo for the funeral of G. A. Nasser; it was chaired by M. A. Suslov. Garbuzov put forward a counter-proposal which, in Glushkov's words, reduced everything by an order of magnitude: instead of a state committee for the improvement of management, a Main Directorate for Computer Technology under the GKNT; instead of a research centre of a dozen institutes, a single institute, VNIIPOU; and the economic models were removed from the task. Suslov concluded that the project was too revolutionary to be implemented all at once. The 24th Congress of the CPSU in April 1971 wrote into the directives of the ninth five-year plan OGAS, the development of the state network of computer centres and, according to Peters, the creation of 1,600 ASUs.
After that, each ministry built its own sectoral automated control system (OASU). According to Gerovitch, the number of such systems grew almost sevenfold in 1971–1975, but they ran on incompatible hardware and software and did not form an interagency network; the 25th Congress in 1976 and the 26th Congress in 1981 again endorsed successive versions of OGAS. In 1977, according to Peters, the project was declassified, and in 1980 Glushkov was able to publish an article in Pravda. After his death in 1982 the promotion of OGAS effectively came to a halt.
What worked and what did not
What worked, above all, was the lower, factory level. The Kyiv school created dozens of systems for controlling processes and enterprises, from the Lvov systems to the automation of scientific experiments, trained a large number of specialists and to a great extent shaped the Soviet ASU industry. The project's technical ideas — a distributed data bank, remote access after verification of authority, direct connection of large centres by broadband channels — were ahead of the practice of their time, and even critically minded historians acknowledge this.
What did not work was the very thing the project had been conceived for: a nationwide network linking accounting, planning and management. Estimates of the number of ASUs introduced differ by orders of magnitude — Peters cites figures ranging from 29 systems in 1971–1975 to about 6,900 systems in 1966–1984 — and this discrepancy in itself shows that no one coordinated the creation of systems on a national scale. According to the official statistics cited by Peters, the computer equipment installed in local management was used at no more than one-sixth of its design capacity; introducing an ASU cost on average about 800,000 roubles per enterprise and often caused discontent among workers and managers.
The Open Planning website says that OGAS ran up against the agencies, not against computing power. Research confirms this idea but calls for a caveat. Gerovitch states plainly that the technical obstacles — a shortage of reliable peripherals and modems, poor telephone lines, a weak software industry — were real but hardly decisive: the nuclear and space programmes overcame more serious technical difficulties. What was decisive was that the network threatened the established hierarchy: collecting information through computer centres undermined the role of the TsSU, and automated planning undermined Gosplan's monopoly on economic decisions.
Peters goes further and explains why no single agency could become the owner of the project. The Soviet economy was formally a pyramid, but in practice it rested on informal ties, mutual favours and bargaining, and the heads of agencies benefited precisely from this. Glushkov's decentralized network could only be introduced from above, but any central agency that received it would lose what made its power informally advantageous. That is why the TsSU dragged out the revision for years, and the Ministry of Finance made sure the project did not go to a rival.
Debate and criticism
Glushkov's most consistent opponents within science were not conservatives but reform-minded economists. According to Glushkov's memoirs, from 1964 onwards E. G. Liberman, V. D. Belkin, I. Ya. Birman and others openly opposed him. Their argument, as Peters retells it, was that the self-financing (khozraschyot) reform would cost no more than the paper on which the resolution would be printed, whereas OGAS required billions. There was also a substantive objection: liberal economists feared that the network would entrench inefficient centralized planning and hinder the introduction of market incentives.
The second line of criticism concerns the very belief in an informational solution. Gerovitch shows that the Soviet leadership readily accepted the idea that economic problems could be solved by improving information flows and management methods without deep reform, and in this sense the cybernetic project suited the authorities. After the failure of 1963–1964 Glushkov himself began to stress that OGAS manages not the economy but flows of information about it; Peters sees this as a forced political compromise and questions the formula itself, since restructuring information flows inevitably restructures both organization and power.
The third line concerns fears of total control. Peters quotes the deputy editor-in-chief of Pravda, V. G. Afanasyev, who in 1971 proposed using OGAS also to collect information about socio-political and ideological processes. In the West, articles about the project by V. Zorza in The Washington Post and a publication in The Guardian portrayed OGAS as a way of replacing the Kremlin's leaders with machines. Glushkov regarded this as an organized disinformation campaign, but that is his own assessment, not confirmed by documents.
The dispute over the 1970 decision is still surrounded by conjecture. Peters retells rumours that on the eve of the meeting Garbuzov persuaded Kosygin that the body managing OGAS would become stronger than the Council of Ministers itself, and the historian himself notes that this is unconfirmed. What is reliably known is something else: the main agencies — the TsSU, Gosplan and the Ministry of Finance — fought for control over the project and against its going to a neighbour, and the top leadership never appointed anyone in charge, as it had with the supervisors of the nuclear and space projects. Glushkov himself considered this the main flaw in the implementation mechanism and sought to have a member of the Politburo made responsible for OGAS.
Legacy today
In popular literature OGAS is often called the “Soviet internet”, but this is a simplification. Peters stresses that the project was not an analogue of ARPANET: the American network linked scientists for data exchange, whereas OGAS was conceived as an instrument for managing the economy, including the conversion of document flow into electronic form and remote access for economic managers to shared data. It is more accurate to see it as an early project of digital state governance, with all the hopes and risks that this entails.
The main lesson that historians draw from this story is institutional. Peters formulates it as a paradox: the first civilian computer networks grew up among cooperating capitalists, not among competing socialists. In the USA the state financed the network and did not prevent scientists from reaching agreements, whereas in the USSR agencies formally subordinate to a single plan behaved like rival firms. A project that required the consent of all the owners of information ran into the fact that each of them stood to lose from transparency.
No less important is the lesson about incompatibility. The sectoral systems of the 1970s, built without common standards, divided the economy as effectively as compatible systems could have united it; Gerovitch writes plainly that the accelerated construction of incompatible sectoral ASUs effectively blocked a national network. Most agency networks fell apart together with the USSR, and internet-type networks in the 1990s were created by commercial companies.
Finally, the history of OGAS shows the price of secrecy. According to Peters, from 1959 to 1977 the project was a state secret: this protected it from public attacks but also deprived it of public support, and its ideas were not tested in open discussion. By the time the project was declassified, the moment had passed. For any modern data-driven planning system, this is an argument for openness from day one.
What open planning takes
- A distributed data bank with access from any location after verification of authority — a prototype of our “registries” and “event log” layers. We take the architecture, but with the reverse access rule: everything that is not closed by law is open, rather than the other way round.
- Continuous recalculation of the plan as new data arrive, as in DISPLAN, is our revision principle of “recalculation based on facts instead of a five-year plan”. A plan in which the system detects a resource shortfall should be flagged as unbalanced automatically and publicly.
- Common open data standards are adopted before agencies and contractors start building their own systems. The 414 incompatible systems of 1966–1970 are a direct warning for the “registries” and “measurement” layers.
- Publicity from day one. The secrecy of OGAS until 1977 deprived the project of allies; in our model the “publication” layer and the registry of data gaps are open from the moment the pilot is launched.
- An honest cost estimate and a phased approach. The dispute over “20 billion versus the cost of paper” was settled by rhetoric; in our model each stage is a pilot with a measurement report, and a negative result is published as a result.
What we do not repeat
- We do not hand the data system to an agency that simultaneously collects statistics, plans, or reports on its own work. The TsSU, having been entrusted with the revision of OGAS, became a judge in its own case; this directly violates our separation rule “those who execute do not verify”.
- We do not substitute information flows for democratic goal-setting. The hope that better data will solve economic problems without changing the rules and without a circuit of public goals is exactly the technocracy against which our model warns.
- We do not build an “all or nothing” project that depends on a single patron in the top leadership. Glushkov looked for a supervisor in the Politburo; we rely on legally significant artefacts and open procedures that outlive changes of leadership.
- We do not use the data circuit to monitor citizens. The 1971 proposal to collect information about ideological processes through OGAS shows how easily an accounting system turns into a control system; the purpose of each registry must be limited in advance.
Links between ideas
Whom the author argued with, whose ideas they developed, whom they answered and whose fate they shared. All links are on the shared graph. Graph of ideas
- Nikolai Fedorenko
Practice and institutions →
Fedorenko sat on Glushkov’s OGAS commission and in 1964 co-wrote an article with him on a network of computing centres.
- Nikolai Fedorenko
Shared fate →
ASPR and OGAS: the technical part was built, but the logic of decision-making remained departmental.
- Stafford Beer
Parallel path →
Two branches of cybernetic planning: comprehensive accounting in OGAS and exception reports in Cybersyn.
- Stafford Beer
Debate and criticism ←
Beer considered the Soviet centralised approach to cybernetic management bureaucratic and vulnerable to doctored data.
- Evsei Liberman
Debate and criticism ←
From 1964 Liberman opposed OGAS: incentive reform was cheaper, and the network would entrench centralised planning.
- Paul Cockshott and Allin Cottrell
Develops ideas →
Cockshott and Cottrell’s model inherits Glushkov’s idea of end-to-end accounting but combines it with radical democracy.
- Vitaly Naishul
Debate and criticism ←
Naishul held that the 1970s drive to automate planning would not overcome bargaining between agencies; the comparison with OGAS is made in the profile.
- Friedrich Hayek
Debate and criticism ←
In Hayek’s logic, OGAS ran up against agencies unwilling to give up information and control.
- Oskar Lange
Parallel path ←
Lange’s “The Computer and the Market” and Glushkov’s OGAS: the computational programme ran up against institutions, not technology.
Timeline
- 1957
Glushkov becomes head of the Computing Centre of the Ukrainian SSR Academy of Sciences (December)
- 1962
The Institute of Cybernetics of the Ukrainian SSR Academy of Sciences is established (December); Kosygin assigns Glushkov the task of building OGAS (November)
- 1963
Resolution of the CPSU Central Committee and the Council of Ministers of 21 May on improving the management of the introduction of computer technology
- 1964
The project is submitted to the government (June) and considered by the Presidium of the Council of Ministers (November); its further development is entrusted to the TsSU
- 1965
According to A. V. Kuteynikov, the preliminary draft design of the EGSVTs is presented in March and rejected in May; the Kosygin–Liberman reform begins
- 1970
A Politburo meeting chaired by M. A. Suslov adopts a cut-down version: a Main Directorate for Computer Technology under the GKNT and VNIIPOU
- 1971
The 24th Congress of the CPSU includes OGAS and the network of computer centres in the directives of the ninth five-year plan
- 1975
The monograph Macroeconomic Models and Principles of Building OGAS (Makroekonomicheskie modeli i printsipy postroeniya OGAS) is published
- 1977
The OGAS project is declassified, according to B. Peters
- 1982
Glushkov dies on 30 January; the promotion of OGAS fades away
Key works
- 1964Problems of Introducing Computer Technology into the National Economy (Problemy vnedreniya vychislitel'noy tekhniki v narodnoe khozyaystvo), with N. P. Fedorenko, Voprosy Ekonomiki, no. 7
- 1970Introduction to Automated Control Systems (Vvedenie v avtomatizirovannye sistemy upravleniya)
- 1974Encyclopedia of Cybernetics (Entsiklopediya kibernetiki), editor-in-chief
- 1975Macroeconomic Models and Principles of Building OGAS (Makroekonomicheskie modeli i printsipy postroeniya OGAS)
- 1976The DISPLAN Dialogue Planning System (Dialogovaya sistema planirovaniya DISPLAN), with G. B. Oleyarsh, Upravlyayushchie Sistemy i Mashiny, no. 4
- 1980DISPLAN: A New Planning Technology (DISPLAN — novaya tekhnologiya planirovaniya), Upravlyayushchie Sistemy i Mashiny, no. 6
Sources
- Benjamin Peters. How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet. 2016
- Slava Gerovitch. InterNyet: why the Soviet Union did not build a nationwide computer network. 2008
- А. В. Кутейников. Академик В. М. Глушков и проект создания принципиально новой автоматизированной системы управления советской экономикой в 1963–1965 гг.. 2011
- В. М. Глушков (публикация Б. Н. Малиновского). Что скажет история? Отрывок из воспоминаний. 1995
- О. В. Китова (Глушкова). О проекте ОГАС, концепции управления научно-техническим прогрессом и методе «прогнозного дерева» В. М. Глушкова. б. г.
- В. В. Шкурба. Глушков и ОГАС. 2013
- Википедия. Глушков, Виктор Михайлович. 2026
- Википедия. ОГАС. 2026
Prepared from open sources. Dates, titles and quotations were checked against the source list at the bottom of the page; where sources disagree, the text says so.