Seven-bit byte country

How Brezhnev's USSR received computers and components from the USA, bypassing sanctions

On June 10, the Ministry of Communications and Mass Communications requested 18 billion rubles from the state reserve fund for the software import substitution program. The authorities approved a plan for additional financing of the domestic IT industry until 2025, taking into account limited international trade.

This is not the first time that the sphere of Russian computer technology has been subject to sanctions. One of the most striking periods of this kind was the 70s of the 20th century, when the USSR, during the Brezhnev “stagnation,” eliminated the gap from the West in the field of computers, through the KGB and a network of front companies, receiving materials and equipment prohibited from import.

The Ministry decides to copy

The year 1969 was largely decisive for the field of information and computing technologies in the USSR. Back in the 50s, the Soviet industry developed at the same level as the USA and Great Britain. By the mid-60s, everything had changed.

Several large research and production centers were formed in the country, engaged in the development of computers. The main ones were located at universities in Moscow, Novosibirsk, Kyiv and Minsk. However, these centers did not have a common understanding of what the standards for future computing machines should be.

The Minsk-32 computers produced in the capital of Belarus adopted the so-called “seven-bit byte”. In the Big Electronic Calculating Machine ( BESM ), developed in Moscow, the byte was six-bit. There was no common standard either in technology or interfaces. The interaction and compatibility of all developments in such a situation remained questionable. Attempts to eliminate the contradictions have been made at least since 1966, but they have led nowhere.

By 1969, the industry leadership had formed the idea that in the future it was necessary to focus primarily on IBM technologies and architecture. It was assumed that this company would in the future become the leader of the entire computer market. At the same time, for some reason they chose the rapidly aging line of IBM/360 computers, created in 1963-64, as a reference point.

IBM products were officially unavailable in the USSR. Since the time of US President Dwight Eisenhower, a number of embargoes and sanctions have been in force, prohibiting American companies from selling computers, their components and other high-tech products to the Union and the Warsaw Pact countries.

Instead of focusing on more affordable samples from Great Britain or West Germany, Soviet officials decided to take technology from the United States for future developments. It was almost impossible to obtain them legally, but the decision was finally formalized by a special board of the USSR Ministry of Radio Industry at a meeting on December 18, 1969.

Nixon's "Window"

Whether the resolution of the Ministry of Radio Industry was dictated by internal rather than external necessity is unknown. However, a few months before the fateful decision of the Soviet board, an event occurred in the United States that largely predetermined how it would be implemented in the next ten years.

On January 20, 1969, Richard Nixon became President of the United States. Among the decisions of the first year of his reign was an order to ease the sanctions imposed on the countries of the communist bloc. For the first time in almost 20 years, the number of high-tech products that representatives of the USSR were allowed to purchase in America was increased.

Of course, we were not talking about mass imports and exports. But the opportunity to buy elements of American computers from Soviet specialists still appeared. There is still no consensus in American historiography as to why Nixon made such a gesture towards the Soviet Union.

It is only known that the liberalization of the technological embargo was not a separate element from the rest of the economic policy and practically coincided in time with the lifting of the ban by Western countries on gas transit from the USSR to Europe.

In 1969, a week before the decision of the Ministry of Radio Industry, construction of the future plant for the production of KamAZ vehicles also began on the banks of the Kama River. For the sake of the project, a number of other restrictions were lifted. Contracts for Soviet construction were carried out by companies from Switzerland, Great Britain, Italy and the USA.

“Don’t fight, but trade!”

Formally, supplies of semiconductors, transistors, other components and entire computers from the USA to the USSR were supposed to remain at an insignificant level. In reality, the requirements were met only on paper. As soon as decisions were made in both countries, the flow of equipment quickly exceeded acceptable levels.

In one of the reports, CIA officer Kenneth Tasky wrote : since 1969, the export of American computer technology to the USSR has skyrocketed. By 1971, the United States had supplied the Soviet Union with $10 million worth of computing equipment, Taschi estimated, which was equal to almost half of all exports over the previous 20 years. In 1972, this figure increased even more and reached a fantastic amount for that time of $20 million.

Cloning the products of the American IT industry was not in vain. In 1971, the same computer of a single standard that was discussed three years earlier was finally presented. As expected, it was made on the basis of a copied IBM 360 line. At the same time, it was decided to continue this practice in the future. The resolution on this was adopted by the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR Alexei Kosygin.

Also in 1971, Kosygin visited the United States, where he was greatly impressed by a presentation organized by IBM. To implement the project, an entire institute was eventually launched - the Scientific Research Center for Electronic Computer Technology, NICEVT. Hundreds of his employees studied the original IBM software, which in America itself, despite its commercial success, was actively criticized for many relatively unsuccessful solutions in technical terms.

In 1972, it was the turn of Richard Nixon himself to visit the USSR. The American leader, who arrived in the Union to meet with Leonid Brezhnev, was greeted with posters “Do not fight, but trade!”

The visit became the starting point for the so-called policy of “détente” in relations between the countries. Among the agreements signed was an agreement between the government of the USSR and the US government “on cooperation in the field of science and technology.” Since then, the Soviet leadership has not thought about the development of original in-house developments in the field of mass production of computers.

From Redondo Beach to the Kremlin

The emergence of a legal opportunity to obtain samples of American computer technology was just the tip of a rapidly forming iceberg. With the weakening of the embargo, several entrepreneurs in the United States tried to obtain long-term licenses from the authorities to conduct trade with the USSR. After a series of unsuccessful attempts, semi-legal and illegal supplies began to flourish. Soon they were several times higher than what was included in official reports on trade turnover between countries.

The system for transporting technological products that developed in 1973-74 had two key links. A significant role in it was played by KGB officers involved in industrial espionage. However, very little is known about their activities. The work of shell companies associated with intelligence services is much better documented. Their massive appearance was prompted by the demand from the Soviet Union for semiconductors. It was not possible to produce them within the USSR in sufficient quantities, and the permitted export of all needs (mostly for the military-industrial complex) could not cover.

The resulting “gap” in the market was closed by intermediary firms. By the mid-1970s there were at least several hundred of them. They all worked through one or more similar channels: they purchased the required order in the States, registered it as an export product to one of the countries of Western Europe, Scandinavia or Africa, from where it was sent one way or another to the countries of Eastern Europe or directly to the USSR. The largest and most famous of these channels was overseen by a man named Richard Mueller.

Not much is known about Müller, who lived in West Germany. According to some sources, he was born in 1948, and in his youth, even before the start of his entrepreneurial activity, he managed to visit Zelenograd, one of the leading centers of the Soviet electronic computing industry. Together with several other German citizens, Müller created the Continental Trading Corporation ( CTC ).

CTC began to develop contacts with representatives of the Soviet Union and eventually agreed to transfer technologies for the production of semiconductors and powerful computers to the USSR. Muller at the same time turns the company into a real syndicate of 20 different legal entities scattered around the world. Their main goal is to remove from the States components ordered by the Soviet side. In addition to Muller, well-known members of this syndicate were a native of Germany, Werner Bruchhäuser, and a naturalized American of Russian origin, Anatoli Maluta, who lived in the town of Redondo Beach in California.

Müller, Bruchhauser and Malyuta began their activities in 1973. The most active period of their work occurred in 1977-1980. During this time, a huge amount of American components, formally intended for sale, for example, in South Africa, came to the USSR through Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Sweden and a number of other countries.

In total, entrepreneurs managed to reach government sales volumes and supply equipment worth more than $30 million to the Union. Most of the supplies pursued the main goal - to establish mass production of semiconductors in the USSR under the conditions of the ongoing trade embargo.

It is unclear exactly when the CTC's activities became known to American intelligence agencies. However, the amazing scale of illegal technological purchases by the USSR in circumvention of sanctions can be found in a declassified CIA report for January 1976.

According to the authors of the document, until 1973, the USSR produced only simple types of semiconductors, and did so in small volumes and extremely slowly. In 1972, the authors of the report write, the Soviets were able to achieve even such a low level of production only through enormous labor resources, stolen or secretly acquired Western developments in semiconductor devices, and the ineffective method of trial and error.

In 1973, the USSR seemed to have decided to resort to large-scale Western assistance. First Deputy Minister of Electronics Industry Kolesnikov and the head of the Second Department of the Ministry, responsible for the development and production of semiconductors, visited the United States and Western Europe, met with leading developers and manufacturers of semiconductors, and got acquainted with the state of affairs in the West. In 1973-74, the Soviets began to seek illegal channels to obtain significant amounts of equipment, including the most advanced equipment available at the time. Since 1974, the USSR has demonstrated a willingness to spend very large amounts of money, at least $100 million, to obtain semiconductor industry equipment, technological assistance, and factories for the production of raw materials for semiconductor production.

from the CIA report

According to US intelligence agencies, since 1973, representatives of the Soviet Union have acquired semiconductor production equipment through various means, despite the embargo, for a total of $40 million. It was clear that Moscow was trying its best to create its own modern semiconductor industry based on imported equipment, the authors of the intelligence report concluded.

The house of cards is collapsing

In January 1981, President Jimmy Carter succeeded Richard Nixon by Ronald Reagan. The USSR was still led by Leonid Brezhnev. A year earlier, the information and computer industry’s established schemes for existence in the 70s, with sanctions and illegal supplies, continued to work. But soon everything was about to change again.

In 1980, in response to the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan, Carter passed a package of new sanctions against the USSR. In fact, any export of American equipment to the country was completely prohibited. Many other industries fell under the embargo: for example, the import of grain crops. Reagan, who came after Carter, again allowed the export of wheat. But then a new period of sanctions pressure began in the oil and gas and technology industries

In August 1981, US law enforcement agencies arrested Richard Muller's CTC partner Anatoly Malyuta and his assistant Sabina Dorn Tittel. They face more than 60 charges, ranging from tax evasion to violating trade embargoes.

A year later, in August 1982, the FBI uncovered a spy ring in Silicon Valley within IBM and several other corporations. The network worked to transmit information for money to Japan and the USSR.

In November 1983, in Sweden, in the port of Malmo, local border guards detained a cargo of components for “sophisticated electronics and computer equipment.” Four containers with American high-tech goods arrived from South Africa and, as it turned out later, were intended for further transportation to the Soviet Union. A few weeks earlier, a similar shipment was arrested in the port of Hamburg, Germany.

Similar stories appeared in the press one after another in the first three years of the Reagan administration. The authorities consistently closed the channels for the supply of equipment from the USA to the USSR that had been operating for almost ten years. The details of the operations were almost always kept secret. The only thing that connected them with each other was the final destination of the cargo. All of them were intended for further use in the Union.

The story of KGB Colonel Vladimir Vetrov, recruited by Western intelligence services, also became important for that period. In 1981-82, Vetrov, having made contact with representatives of French and American intelligence, passed on information about the complete scheme for organizing scientific and technical espionage to the KGB. In total, the colonel disclosed about 70 sources in 15 countries, as well as the names of 450 employees involved in collecting scientific and technical information (the so-called “ Farewell dossier ”).

Based on the information received from Vetrov, CIA specialists carried out a large-scale counter-operation to supply false technical information and equipment to the USSR. The then KGB-stolen software and components with malicious code built into them led to a major explosion on the Soviet Urengoy-Surgut-Chelyabinsk gas pipeline in the summer of 1982 (the involvement of US intelligence services in it is disputed by some Russian experts). Vetrov himself was executed by decision of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR in February 1985.

Despite the increased pressure, the information and technology obtained over the previous years was enough for a new semiconductor production plant to appear in the USSR in 1985. Nevertheless, by the beginning of Perestroika, the chain of semi-legal and illegal supplies of equipment from the United States, formed during the Brezhnev period, was completely destroyed.

Soon no one thought about effectively continuing to borrow, much less develop their own computer systems and software. It turned out that over the past twenty years since 1969, the country, which is in conditions of economic crisis, trade embargoes and war, has fallen hopelessly behind the IT industry of its main enemy.

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