FROMN EWSPEAK TO A HISTORY OF SOVIET CYBERNETICS SLAVA GEROVITCH From Newspeak to Cyberspeak This Page Intentionally Left Blank From Newspeak to Cyberspeak A History of Soviet Cybernetics Slava Gerovitch The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England ©2002 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. Set in Sabon by The MIT Press. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gerovitch,Slava. From newspeak to cyberspeak : a history of Soviet cybernetics / Slava Gerovitch. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-262-07232-7 (hard cover : alk. paper) 1. Cybernetics—Soviet Union—History. I. Title. Q305 .G47 2002 003'.5'0947—dc21 2001056241 for my mother, Raisa Sklyar This Page Intentionally Left Blank Contents Preface and Acknowledgements xi Introduction: Soviet Science and Politics through the Prism of Language 1 1 The Cold War in Code Words: The Newspeak of Soviet Science 11 Balancing Military and Ideological Priorities for Cold War Science 14 Shifting Boundaries between Knowledge and Ideology 18 Newspeak: The Fundamentals 21 Scientific Newspeak 26 “Formalism” as a Floating Signifier 31 From Formulas to “Formalism” in Mathematics 33 From Literary Form to “Formalism” in Linguistics 37 The Specter of “Idealism” in Physiology 42 2 Cyberspeak: A Universal Language for Men and Machines 51 Norbert Wiener and Andrei Kolmogorov: Two Mathematicians Tackle Biology 56 Control via Feedback: The Body as a Servomechanism 61 The Order of Life: The Organism as an Entropy-Reducing Machine 64 Human Communication as an Engineering Problem: Man as an “Information Source” 67 The Computer and the Mind as Universal Logical Machines 72 The Logic of the Brain: The Nervous System as a Turing Machine 75 The Computer as a Brain and the Brain as a Computer 79 The Making of Cyberspeak and the Emergence of Cybernetics 83 viii Contents Cyberspeak Becomes Universal 89 The Cybernetics Bandwagon 96 3 “Normal Pseudo-Science” 103 Cybernetic Ideas in a Soviet Context: Pro and Contra 105 “Russian Scandal” at the Root of Cybernetics 113 Postwar Ideological Campaigns as Rituals 115 The Cybernetics “Scandal” 118 Serial Reproduction of Criticism 126 Computers as “Mathematical Machines” of the Cold War 131 The Military Definition of Computing: Technology without Ideology 142 Soviet Computers: A State Secret or a “Display Technology”? 150 4 Cybernetics in Rebellion 153 Soviet Science in Search of a New Language 153 Soviet Computers: Declassified and Deified 155 The Computer as a Paragon of Objectivity 161 Soviet Philosophy between Scylla and Charybdis 163 The Newspeak Defense of Cybernetics 166 The Military Defense of Cybernetics 173 Cyberspeak Challenges Newspeak 179 Cybernetics and Genetics: A Common Cause 183 Cybernetics Challenges Soviet Philosophy 188 The Legitimation of Cybernetics 193 5 The “Cybernetization” of Soviet Science 199 Cybernetics as a “Trading Zone” 200 The Council on Cybernetics as an Institutional “Umbrella” 204 Biological Cybernetics: Genes as “Units of Hereditary Information” 211 The Mathematical “Axioms of Life” 214 Physiological Cybernetics: The Brain as a Subject of Technology 218 “Man Is the Most Perfect of All Known Cybernetic Machines . . .” 224 Cybernetic Linguistics: Making the Study of Language an “Exact Science” 227 From Machine Translation to Linguistic Theory 232 Contents ix The Fate of the Institute of Cybernetics 241 “What Is Cybernetics?” 246 6 Cybernetics in the Service of Communism 253 “Cybernetics in the Service of Communism” 253 The “Dialectical Materialization” of Cybernetics 257 Cybernetics in Fashion 260 From “Military Cybernetics” to “Economic Cybernetics” 264 “Optimal Decision-Making on a National Scale”: Aspirations and Constraints 268 “Optimal Planning”: A Vehicle of Economic Reform or an Obstacle to It? 274 Cybernetics in the Service of the Establishment 279 CyberNewspeak: The “Scientific Management of Society” 285 The End of the Cybernetics Game 288 Conclusion Soviet Cybernetics: Prometheus or Proteus? 293 Cyberspeak as a Carnival Language 293 Cyberspeak as an Instrument of Freedom 296 Cyberspeak as a Universal Language of Capitalism and Communism 300 Notes 305 Index 361