Victor Glushkov - pioneer of Soviet computing

Victor Mikhailovich Glushkov (Russian: Ви́ктор Миха́йлович Глушко́в; Ukrainian: Ві́ктор Миха́йлович Глушко́в; August 24, 1923 – January 30, 1982) was the founding father of information technology in the Soviet Union (and specifically in Ukraine), and one of the founders of Cybernetics. He was born in Rostov-on-Don, Russian SFSR, in the family of a mining engineer. He graduated from Rostov State University in 1948, and in 1952 proposed solutions to Hilbert's fifth problem and defended his thesis in Moscow State University.

One of his great practical goals was the creation of a National Automatized System of Administration of Economy (OGAS), which included the establishment of a network of computers to manage the allocation of resources and information among organizations in the national economy, which would represent a higher form of socialist planning than the extant Stalinist command economy. This ambitious project was ahead of its time, first being proposed and modeled in 1962. It received opposition from many senior Communist Party leaders who felt the system threatened Party control of the economy. By the early 1970s official interest in this system ended.