Amar Makhmadaliev

IB HOTA | PERIOD 5

Part II

 

Overview

The failings of the Soviet Union’s achievements in comparison with the United States is best highlighted in the difference in political philosophy. The culture of innovation within the United States was possible due to the freedom of business competition that was cultivated within the post-war period. The Soviet Union’s centralized power structure alongside its collective process on goods and services led to a lack of opportunity and immediate support for the scientific community. The resources required for innovation were better supplied by the American equipment of capitalist structures. The Soviet Union fell behind, as a result of centralized intellectual and informational power held by the Soviet government. The question is then, was the leading factor in the disadvantages of the Soviet Union found in the instrument and teaching of the scientific and technological community or found in the negative effects of the Soviet Government’s overlap in science and technology.

 

First Point of View

The first point of view aims to identify the failure of the Soviet Sciences to be a disorganization separate from political conflicts. These would be discrepancies found within the education system and disorganization of resources in facilities, materials, and computation.

 

Education & Post-Education

The soviet scientific prowess was focused, and had a few notable areas of strength. These consisted of aerospace engineering, nuclear engineering, mathematics, and physics. The reason for this is found in the emphasis of the Soviet school system pertaining to primary and secondary education on mathematics and science. The result is found in a highly educated general population, and very strong mathematicians and scientists. The issue comes then in two key areas, that being of the university education system and the application of science.  Graham Loren states:

 

“Several years ago only a few more than 100,000 American high school students were taking calculus each year, while 5 million Soviet students did so. Perhaps these statistics have changed somewhat, since the United States has tried to improve its system

of mathematics and science education, but a severe shortage of qualified high

school mathematics teachers have hampered rapid improvement.”

 

 The general population within America may not have been as rigorously trained on the fundamentals of scientific inquiry or mathematical analysis, however, those that constituted the first ranks of American colleges were primed in a greater climate than of Soviet universities. This elevation following the institution of formal education is where America begins its trajectory correction toward competition with the Soviet Union. The application of scientific inquiry alongside the usage of mathematics in all areas of modern technology are what really set American innovation apart. Another major difference as a result of the capitalist system in which American scientists could utilize was that the emphasis on the paper output was far less strong than that of the Soviet counterpart. Soviet scientists saw the end of a scientific inquiry in the publication of a paper, whereas American scientists only saw it as another step with a greater expanse of opportunity. These opportunities presented themselves in the commercial, militaristic, or further scientific applications of their findings.

 

Soviet Procurement

The Soviet Union was vast, and due to its centralized distribution of equipment it left many scientific facilities with much to be desired. American industry provided ample resources for scientific equipment. It was not uncommon for Soviet programs to wait for months on equipment that would as a result either render the experiment useless or at a complete standstill. John Tuirkevish writes: 

 

“The research base of the Soviet Union is very narrow, confined

as it is to Academy institutes and four or five major universities.

This may be contrasted to the diversity of research institutions

in the United States: universities, government laboratories, foundations,

 small colleges, large corporations and small enterprises.

Physical facilities for carrying out scientific investigations i

Soviet Union are barely adequate except in a small number of

prestige laboratories. Old buildings poorly adapted to laboratory

use, new buildings constructed with little knowledge of the best in

contemporary laboratory design is overcrowded. Scientific

equipment is either copied from American models or imported.

The Soviet economy has not developed an instrument industry

sufficiently alert to scientific discoveries, nor adequate to give

logistic support to Russian scientists. This is in sharp contrast to

the help the American scientist receives from a highly developed

scientific-instrument and chemical-supplies.”

 

These programs were well funded by the Communist Party, but they were isolated from the rest of the academic world. They were located in various areas across the Soviet Union and their computational equipment was often unstandardized. They as a result had less worry about the duration of their experiments, but were bottlenecked by a general inability to share data and acquire materials. American laboratories were often in various settings being that of universities, companies, and instituies. This led to greater opportunities for collaboration. American laboratories held smaller intervals of funding and often expanded too much time on funding raising. They made up for this in the immediacy of material available for scientific research, a comprehensive computer system, and fast results.

 

Technological Discrepancies

American innovation was exchanged in monetization for homeland security in cases such as that of the rise of IBM. No such public sector was made to incentivise creation in the Soviet Union, but instead committees to tackle the immediate issues were set up. Peter Hall states:

 

“One person with one good idea

can bring his-her idea to the marketplace

and can easily carve a niche with a good

product. As much as 80 per cent of software

goods and services come from small independants.”

 

The public sector had great leaps during the cold war as start-ups in software development began to create new markets in America . These companies averaged 30-40 people and brought in revenue around 1-3 million dollars per year. This new paradigm in computation and technology was shared with the world globally as the business oriented market in Japan saw great expenditure in products made in the US. America’s business opportunity allowed for a greater incentive for talented people to create cutting edge technologies. Atushi Akera observes: 

 

“The story of IBM's Applied Science Department

shows the kind of path all firms had to follow if they wished to take ad-

vantage of the cold war's dualistic economy and make products for

both commercial and military applications.”

The post-war era opened up much militaristic reinforcement of technological systems pertaining to the new technologies emerging from the creation of the transistor. Something that did not happen, without the involvement of the government in the Soviet Union.

 

The Second Point of View

The second point of view aims at the broader implications of political philosophies and governmental organization as the largest factor in the Soviet Union's inability to keep up with the US in regards to technology and science.

 

Political Overlap

Though the Soviet Union held a considerable amount of strength at the beginning of the Cold war it would face problems in many areas as a result of its inability to adapt to the microchip. Centralized systems were key for Soviet scale and distribution, home computers are the opposite direction of this. The context of a country that divided its production of foods to regions so that no region may be able to thrive on its own helps explain the struggle it would face in software development in the latter half of the century. The Soviet Union had progressed immense scientific and technological grounds in nuclear production and aerospace, because of the militaristic incentives of these endeavors. The very same reason for such immense accomplishments within short intervals of time is the one responsible for the lack of variety present within Soviet Science. This reason for astounding results is found in the political ties of the Soviet Union’s philosophy of central planning. The United States is no stranger to government funded research programs, but these were nowhere as nearly centralized or focused as that of the Soviet Union. By expending tremendous effort on one focused endeavor the Soviet Union was able to achieve great discoveries and engineering feats, but it also led to overlooking in new areas such as genetic work. The Soviet Union for this same reason of political security instituted centralized computer systems that were unable to communicate effectively across regions. Whilst having a considerably small gap for debate within the initial climate of the Scientific race the Soviet Union quickly fell behind once the technological development of micro processing for home computers provided ample opportunities within the scientific and business settings in America. Elena Aronova reflects:

 

“In the climate of control, censorship and self-censorship, texts tended to become more and more irrelevant, little more than conveyors of cryptic messages... Science therefore found itself in a situation where publication played only a marginal role: it

lived in an almost pre-gutenberg's world”

 

The Soviet system not only created discrepancies in the information being transmitted, but included a nuance in minds of the science community in the very information trying to be communicated.

 

Conclusion

The Soviet Union aimed to preserve power through all disciplines including that of information. By limiting the scope and genre of scientific research the government was able to maintain a microscopic overview of the community at the sacrifice of application development. America had no such restrictions, but instead worked with the business sector to foster innovation and monetize the application of technology. Giants such as IBM were created for these purposes, scientific instruments and materials were able to be effectively distributed for scientific research. The American education system had a steep incline to emphasize new thinking at its heights and these scientific endeavors did not stop at a paper, but at the application of the theory into reality. The greatest factor then is that of the political infrastructure that allowed for the spread of information and ideas unchained by censorship, but fostered by monetization.