00100	AN ESTIMATE OF SOVIET SOFTWARE
00200	
00300	
00400		While  there  are  occasional  good  Soviet  programs, Soviet
00500	software is behind that of almost  any  other  major  computer  using
00600	country,  i.e.  behind the U.S. or Britain, or Japan.  My information
00700	on this point is several years old, but it is hard to  believe  there
00800	has  been  a  decisive change recently.  Here is some of the evidence
00900	and some of the reasons:
01000	
01100		1. In 1968, when the BESM 6, a computer about  like  the  CDC
01200	3600  and  their  main  large  scientific  computer, had been out two
01300	years, there was still not a symbolic assembler for it. The only real
01400	compiler  was  Ershov's  ALPHA which ran on the M20 and produced code
01500	for the BESM 6.  This was an adaptation of ALPHA for the M20.  It was
01600	not yet available for BESM 6's unsupported by M20's or M220's or BESM
01700	4's which were compatible machines.
01800	
01900		2. There were two working time-sharing systems in the  Soviet
02000	academic world in 1971 and neither was in any kind of production use.
02100	The Novosibirsk experimental AIST-0 ran  on  a  kludge  of  two  M220
02200	computers  connected to several 4k blocks of memory and lacked disks,
02300	because they had not been able to make their French  built  imitation
02400	IBM2311s work.  In Moscow, they had an experimental system running on
02500	the BESM 6, but it only had a JOSS like language and, I think, a  toy
02600	LISP.   It  had  just  received some Soviet imitation 2311's but they
02700	weren't connected yet.
02800	
02900		3.  A   1968   conference   on   sharing   programs   between
03000	organizations  reflected  a  situation  akin to that before SHARE was
03100	formed but with large institutional obstacles to sharing.
03200	
03300		4. In my opinion, the basic obstacle to  program  development
03400	or any other co-operative activity in the Soviet Union is the extreme
03500	difficulty of forming all-Union  organizations.   It  is  simply  not
03600	legal  for  a group of individuals or even a group of institutions to
03700	form an organizations, establish a  publication,  and  hold  national
03800	meetings.   To  do so without sponsorship of the cognizant ministries
03900	is as improper as to form a voluntary organization  within  the  U.S.
04000	Army  in  wartime  to  promote  a policy. Naturally, there are ways o
04100	getting things done and for people to get together at other meetings,
04200	but  formal co-operation of any kind has to be done through the chain
04300	of command.  I don't claim any exact understanding of the  situation,
04400	but  something  like  this  is  one  of  their main problems.  I read
04500	somewhere that any  national  meeting  has  to  be  approved  by  the
04600	bureaucracy   of  the  Central  Committee  of  the  Communist  Party.
04700	Moreover, if this is true, it is probably classified  information  as
04800	is, for example, the existence of the censorship.
04900	
05000		The  other experts are Roger Levien at Rand and the people he
05100	could refer you to and Jack Schwartz at the Courant Institute of NYU.