Soviet Cybernetics Review, Vol. 2, No. 6

A 65-year-old engineer, D.G. Zhimerin, once one of Stalin's ministers, emerged from obscure retirement to become the "tsar" of Soviet computing. Reporting directly to the Council of Ministers, he has responsibility for improving the management of the national economy, for a Statewide Automated Management System with the long-debated State Network of Computer Centers — but apparently not for computer hardware. This issue includes an interview, a commentary, and a paper by Zhimerin. He reports plans for about 2,400 new management information systems by 1975, while admitting that "work is proceeding weakly" at several hundred design and research organizations. Articles claiming great achievements are matched with others detailing the shortcomings, e.g., low output, lack of software, peripherals, and trained personnel. The director of the mysterious Georgian Institute of Cybernetics writes enthusiastically but vaguely of psychoheuristic methods "that can help us to mold a new person." Other articles discuss computer grading of hockey; making a computer center profitable; and medical use of computers, urging that medical students learn the fundamentals of probability theory, pattern recognition, mathematical logic, mathematical analysis, and control theory. (Volume 3 is R-1190.)