Gorbachev's Information Revolution

Controlling Glasnost In A New Electronic Era

Wilson P. Dizard, S. Blake Swensrud

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429713156
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This book analyzes Gorbachev's perestroika and its relationship to the information revolution. It examines the Gorbachev initiatives in scientific and technological sectors and their implications for Soviet society as well as for the world beyond Soviet borders.

1
The Gorbachev Challenge

In the early years after the Russian revolution, Leon Trotsky reportedly proposed to Stalin that a modern telephone system be built in the new Soviet state. Stalin brushed off the idea, saying, "I can imagine no greater instrument of counter-revolution in our time."

This incident reflects the traditional ambivalence of Soviet leaders between the need for an adequate national communications system and the fear of losing control of their information monopoly. One result is that the USSR has the lowest per capita distribution of telephones among the industrialized nations—10 per 100 citizens. Most other civilian communications resources are equally poor.

In Mikhail Gorbachev's Soviet Union, pragmatic needs are forcing a new look at the dilemma between tight information control and economic efficiency. In his campaign to shake up the economy, the Soviet leader's biggest gamble may be his plans for a massive upgrading of communications and information facilities, from ordinary telephones to high-tech computers. Whether he succeeds will not be clear for a long time. What is clear is that Gorbachev is intent on moving toward a Soviet version of a Western information-based economy.

The outside world's attention in this area has been focused on one aspect of Gorbachev's information policies—the so-called glasnost campaign, aimed at providing more credible content in Soviet media and the arts. Glasnost (openness) has already had the effect of appearing to legitimize the new leader's agenda of economic and social reforms. It is a potentially hopeful factor in the prospect for a long-term evolution toward a more open, less repressive society. One of the hallmarks of such an evolution will be the modification, and eventual phasing out, of long-standing controls over communications and information resources.

The glasnost campaign is a small step in this direction. In its present form, its effects are largely limited to centralized media channels where the leadership can control its form and pace. More fundamental changes in the Soviet information environment will not happen until ordinary citizens gain greater access to networks of telephones, computers, and other electronic facilities in ways that will give them greater personal control over information. Viewed in this light, Gorbachev's plans for expanding these facilities have implications for the Soviet future well beyond his economic rationale for the project. This study will examine the Gorbachev initiatives in these sectors and their implications for Soviet society as well as for the world beyond Soviet borders.

The New Agenda

Although many of the details of the new telecommunications and computer projects are not known, the general outline has been broadly publicized in Soviet media. The Gorbachev agenda includes

• doubling the telephone system by the early 1990s,
• introducing computers and data bases at all levels of the national economy, and
• training a new generation, beginning with grade-school students, to become computer literate Soviet citizens.

Similar proposals have been a recurrent feature of Soviet economic plans for over two decades, with a wide gap between promises and results. Gorbachev clearly intends to narrow if not close the gap. His initiatives are an attempt to bring the USSR into the mainstream of a major global change. Advanced communications and information facilities are transforming the world economic environment with socially and politically compelling effects. As the world's third largest economy, the Soviet Union already has significant resources in these sectors, particularly in the military-industrial area. Nevertheless, Gorbachev and his planners are acutely aware of the country's overall deficiencies and the dangers of slipping even further behind the West economically and technologically.

Internationally, the new telecommunications and information initiatives can have a long-term effect on the strategic balance between the USSR and the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. As in the past, the Soviet military will have first call on the new resources, both for its own uses and for the large industrial structure that directly supports it. Viewed from Moscow, the technological and economic changes taking place in China pose additional pressures for the Soviet role in the global high-tech competition.

In the civilian sector, improved communications and information facilities can reduce the inefficiencies that have nagged the Soviet economy for decades. Further down the road, a reasonably efficient economy could make the Soviet Union a more significant player in the global economy. For the present, the country is in the anomolous position of being a major industrial power whose external trade involves primarily raw materials and energy resources. It operates, as Soviet specialist Thane Gustafson notes, outside the global technological cycle.

Another Soviet affairs expert, Frederick Starr, points out that "computers have emerged as the last best hope for making the old economy work."¹ They are essential to the success of the sweeping plans for restructuring the Soviet economy announced in June 1987. They also have a direct bearing on Mikhail Gorbachev's prospects for retaining his leadership role by delivering on the expansive goals he has set for the economy in the coming years.

Given these imperatives, the Gorbachev initiatives must be taken seriously, not merely as another round of party promises to be expunged or conveniently forgotten in the future. A major upgrading of Soviet communications and information resources—key components of his high-tech modernization drive—will take place in the coming decade. By the mid-1990s, the USSR should have advanced facilities in these sectors roughly comparable to current resources in the West.

A significant start has already been made. It is most apparent in the telecommunications field, where decisions on large-scale expansion of these resources were taken before Gorbachev officially came to power in 1985. A recent survey by the Telecommunications Industry Research Center in Britain projects 1987 telecommunications equipment expenditures in the USSR at the equivalent of $9.8 billion, an increase of 17 percent over the previous year. Among industrialized countries, this represents less than half of projected U.S. spending ($24.3 billion), but considerably more than the projections for either Japan ($7.1 billion) or Germany ($6.1 billion).² Even allowing for statistical hyperbole in figures based on Soviet data, it is clear that a major effort to upgrade the country's telecommunications plant is under way.

Comparable expenditure figures for Soviet computers and related equipment are more difficult to obtain. The USSR is a major producer of such equipment, with particular emphasis on larger machines. It has been slow to adapt to the new range of desktop computers that are common in the West. Nevertheless, Soviet planners are shifting their priorities toward the smaller machines.

Even if the planned expansion of communications resources is only moderately successful, it can have an important effect in improving both the economy and the day-to-day living standards in the USSR. In a society where citizens are resigned to accepting small benefits from large promises, such incremental improvements can strengthen Gorbachev's credibility. Moreover, there is the glasnost factor—the potentially destabilizing effects of the new facilities on the Soviet leadership's ability to maintain its present level of information control.

The prospect of the Soviet leadership losing its present level of control over information is strongly influenced by the current younger generation being the most highly educated in the country's history. Among other attributes, this generation is better prepared by training and inclination to manage the vast amounts of information needed by an advanced industrial society. If previous practice is followed, there will be stringent controls on the new facilities to assure that they are focused primarily on the leadership's priorities. Nevertheless the proposed changes involve more than the addition of another set of resources like automobiles or housing. The Soviets will learn what the West has already found out, namely, that rapid expansion of high-tech communications and information resources results in a wide range of unplanned and unintended social and political effects such as job dislocations and legal practices.

Western observers have made widely divergent predictions about the potential impact of these changes within the USSR. These predictions range from a high-tech reversion to Stalinist controls to the overthrow of the present regime by a newly enlightened citizenry. The more probable scenario lies among these extremes, involving an evolution toward liberalized controls rather than violent change. The eventual outcome will be determined in part by power struggles between old-line officials and the new technocratic elite. If expanded information resources are to be efficiently exploited in the USSR, the current balance of power between technocrats and party members will have to be redefined, with critical political and social impact. The current leadership will have to co-opt the growing body of technocrats who have the expertise to manage the new high-tech facilities. This, in turn, will add a new level of complexity to the West's relations with the USSR. Beyond the need to contain Soviet military capabilities, there is little agreement in the West on how to deal with the changes within the Soviet Union that will come with the expanded communications and information resources (among other developments).

The complexities can be summarized, simplistically but usefully, in a shorthand phrase used over the years by Soviet-watchers: the "fat Russian/thin Russian" debate. The fat-Russian scenario identifies the long-term interest of the West with trying to influence Soviet behavior through liberalized trade and other steps that might encourage the country's development as a more prosperous, and presumably more peaceful, society. The thin-Russian scenario sees the West's best interest as aspiring to manage the decline of the present Soviet structure to a point where a less militaristic, more humane and democratic society can evolve.

The real-life options are, of course, considerably more complicated than choosing between hypothetical fat and thin Russians. The United States and other Western countries have relatively limited abilities to affect Soviet political and social patterns Decisions about influencing the pattern of communications and information resources are particularly complex. The increasing availability of these resources within the Soviet Union adds a new dimension to Western strategy. It is a question not only of fatter Russians but also of better informed Russians.

Postindustrial Goals

The Gorbachev high-tech initiatives have a purpose beyond the accretion of more and better industrial resources. It involves the perception by the leadership of the evolution of the USSR as a postindustrial state. The new Soviet leadership is intent on demonstrating that only under its version of socialism can the new technologies be properly exploited. Mikhail Gorbachev's plans reach back to the Leninist formulation of "revolutionary fervor and American efficiency" as a guide for the alternate postindustrial society.³ His focus is on economic reform, and it is not misplaced. With two decades of steadily declining growth rates, the Soviet economy is losing momentum at a time when the United States and other advanced countries are preparing for the technologies of the twenty-first century.

The Gorbachev high-tech initiatives, if successful, will permit the current leadership to begin to redeem promises made over the past seven decades about the party's ability to make the Soviet economy work more efficiently. In the early 1960s, Nikita Khrushchev told Soviet citizens that they would have the highest standard of living in the world by 1980, Mikhail Gorbachev is more realistic in his blueprint for the Soviet future. The 1986 economic program adopted by the Twenty-seventh Party Congress promises to double output by the end of the century with special attention to consumer goods and services. Based on previous performance, it is likely there will be slippages in meeting this goal. It would be a mistake, however, to underestimate either the intentions or the capabilities of the Soviets. The USSR already has a respectable computer-based production and planning infrastructure. Moreover, the Soviet government has a proved ability to marshal resources for purposes it considers important, even if the effort involves considerable waste and other inefficiencies.

There is a critical difference between Soviet and Western approaches to mass computerization and communications. The West is going through a rapid, disorganized, technology-driven expansion period characterized by shifts in political and economic power. In expanding Soviet information resources, Gorbachev is not catching up as much as adapting a limited part of Western expertise and experience to autarchic political and economic needs.

For the Soviet communications and computer initiatives, the emphasis is on managed change with particular attention to maintaining control over communications and information, which are at the heart of the ruling party's claim to power. Previous Soviet leaders have maintained tight control over limited resources. The Gorbachev approach is riskier. In expanding telecommunications and information facilities, he has to consider the erosion of long-standing controls. As Soviet computer specialist and Academy of Sciences member Andrei P. Ershov has acknowledged, "Computerization will cause changes. A society has to adapt to new technologies, even if that means changing the legal structure of that society."⁴

The overall purpose of the new initiative is to serve government military and industrial needs—an electronic expansion of present priorities. In a sense, it is replicating what initially happened in the West in the 1960-1980 period when advanced communications and information resources were applied primarily to large-scale industrial and military uses. The Gorbachev initiatives are an attempt to close the gaps left by his predecessors who neglected to keep pace with the West in these sectors. Another purpose is to improve the general standard of Soviet life by a more equal redistribution of capital resources between consumer goods and heavy industrial production. Gorbachev is faced with the difficult task of shifting the Soviet economy away from the labor-intensive Stalinist model to a more high-tech, service-oriented model.

During Gorbachev's first two years in office, his high-tech plans were marked by considerable rhetoric and goal-setting. The June 1987 decision on restructuring key parts of the economy was a bold step toward basic reform. Nevertheless, the implementation of these changes has, initially at least, been cautious. In part this can be attributed to internal Kremlin debates, which have marked Gorbachev's consolidation of power in these early years. The somber warnings of his more realistic economic advisers often take second place to the political maneuvering between party, military, and other power centers.

For the present, it is significant that Gorbachev recognizes the need to take decisive steps toward an advanced postindustrial environment. In some ways, his approach is comparable to the industrialization drive of the Stalin period. There is, however, an essential difference between the Stalin era's industrialization experience and the current situation. Traditional industrial facilities could more easily be centrally managed and controlled than is possible today. Even in the face of considerable waste and loss of efficiency, forced industrialization transformed the Soviet economy. In the Stalin era, the focus was on quantitative production; Gorbachev faces the more difficult problem of qualitative production—a task that calls for heavy reliance on high-tech facilities.

The large-scale applications of communications and of information resources in particular present strikingly different problems. For over 60 years, limited Soviet resources in these sectors have been contained within the party's control mechanisms. Copying machines and telephones were available almost exclusively to politically reliable enterprises and individuals. Similiar controls were placed on the computers that were installed in workplaces in the late 1950s and 1960s. The large mainframe machines typical of that period were located in centralized facilities where their use could be monitored.

This mainframe experience still influences the thinking of many Soviet officials regarding computerization. Centrally controlled mainframes have served the state reasonably well up to now. If more advanced use of computers is to be encouraged, however, the USSR will have to adapt to the dynamic shifts occurring in the technology. As the West is demonstrating, mainframes will continue to be important, but the focus is now on the large-scale dispersion of smaller computer facilities and networks.

For the Soviet Union, a similar shift would necessitate a wider dispersal of communications and information resources than has ever been considered in its history. A new balance will need to be struck between centralized direction and opening up information resources to an increasingly educated population.

The West is now going through the creative destruction that economist Joseph Schumpeter saw as the characteristic of periods of major technological change. The shifts are often traumatic as older industries wither, newer ones come to the fore, and ordinary people's lives, as well as the best-laid plans of the experts, are disrupted. At the same time, there is a general acceptance of the need for changes in social patterns and political power in ways that reinforce democratic values as well as economic growth.

A somewhat parallel debate is taking place in the USSR within a different ideological context. Old-line Marxist-Leninist doctrine on the "scientific-technological revolution"...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the Authors
• Foreword
• 1. The Gorbachev Challenge
• 2. The Telephone Connection
• 3. Computers: Closing the Gap?
• 4. The Future of Communications in the USSR
• Appendix 1: Pravda Announcement of the 1985 Decisions on Telecommunications Expansion
• Appendix 2: The Organization of Soviet Information Systems and Resources
• Appendix 3: Soviet Official's Views on National Computerization Progress
• Appendix 4: Communism in a High-tech Era: A Soviet View
• Notes