Quick thought #1: Western technology in the dissolving USSR
Over this summer I watched TraumaZone; the 2022 documentary of Adam Curtis is made up of archival footage of the BBC in the USSR and Russia during the period of 1985-1999. There is no narrator, only captions and the original image and sound. It is a captivating series even though it is made up of seven hour-long episodes. Watching it, I felt the confusion and surreality of those years. Not knowing who the state is while living in the collapsed economy of the late-stage Soviet Union was a grinding experience. Two scenes stood out to me as a reflection on technology’s place in an economy being destroyed by an impossible system and corruption.
Corruption was rampant. People who could access cheap resources that were meant for others, would sell the products on the black market for a higher price. Some would even smuggle cheap oil out of the USSR and sell it on the global markets. In return, they would use that money to buy computers in the United States and sell them priced up for the Soviet market. A scene shows American devices being used by Russian managers who were desperately trying to deliver on their quotas assigned by the central government.
In another scene, in the first years of the newly formed Russian Federation, an economic official proudly showed his case of floppy disks. He was showing off the pile of documents holding all the data that could now be stored in a small box. The data was collected to produce economic forecasts. Economists needed to predict how much of what product will be needed where. The system could never account for all the changes in people’s needs and taste. So, by the end there were warehouses full of surplus goods while necessities did not reach locations across the country.
The USSR tried to seal its own borders. Yet millions of people got access to western goods through the smuggling networks. People were desperate for technology that could make their lives easier. Factory leaders often had good intentions. They wanted to deliver what the population needed. One could now argue that the computers simply arrived too late; that the Soviet Union was late to adapt. But the system was already dysfunctional. No amount of technology could save what was a failing social and political project.