Balkan cyberia : Cold War computing, Bulgarian modernization, and the information age behind the Iron Curtain / Victor Petrov.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Petrov, Victor, 1987- Author.

Series:

MIT Press series in the history of computing

History of computing

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Electronic digital computers--History--20th century.

Electronic digital computers.

Computers--Bulgaria--History--20th century.

Computers.

Computers--Soviet Union--History.

Computer industry--Bulgaria--History--20th century.

Computer industry.

Cold War.

Bulgaria.

Soviet Union.

Genre:

History

Physical Description:

xx, 402 pages : black and white illustrations ; 23 cm.

Other Title:

Cold War computing, Bulgarian modernization, and the information age behind the Iron Curtain

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts ; London, England : The MIT Press, [2023]

Summary:

"Bulgaria in 1963 was a communist country led by a centralized party trying to navigate a multinational Cold War. The state needed money, and it sought prestige. By cultivating a burgeoning computer industry, Bulgaria achieved both but at great cost to the established order. In Balkan Cyberia, Victor Petrov elevates a deeply researched, local story of ambition into an essential history of global innovation, ideological conflict, and exchange. Granted tremendous freedom by the Politburo and backed by a concerted state secret intelligence effort, a new privileged class of technical intellectuals and managers rose to prominence in Bulgaria in the 1960s. Plugged in to transnational business and professional networks, they strove to realize the party's radical dreams of utopian automation, and Bulgaria would come to manufacture up to half of the Eastern Bloc's electronics. Yet, as Petrov shows, the export oriented nature of the industry also led to the disruption of party rule. Technicians, now thinking with and through computers, began to recast the dominant intellectual discourse within a framework of reform, while technocratic managers translated their new found political clout into economic power that served them well before and after the revolutions of 1989"--Back cover.

Contents:

Preface

Introduction: The worlds of the Bulgarian computer

The conjuncture : the road to the Bulgarian electronics industry

The captive market : the rise and apogee of an industry

Access denied : spies, technologies, and circulation across the Iron Curtain

Roses and lotuses : Bulgaria's electronic entanglement with India

Automatic for the people : the scientific-technical revolution and society

The socialist cyborg : education, intellectuals, and culture

Networked and plugged in : computer priests and their pathways

Conclusion: The uneven future

Appendix A: Snapshot of automation in 1989

Appendix B: Types of machines produced.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 329-378) and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Petrov, Victor. Balkan cyberia

ISBN:

9780262545129

0262545128

OCLC:

1334726033