History of Science and Engineering Annotation << Back BEGINNINGS OF CYBERNETICS IN THE USSR UNDER THE FLAG OF ADMIRAL A.I. BERG B.A. Kushner The essay is concerned with a great Soviet scientist and engineer, three-star admiral Axel Ivanovich Berg, one of the founders of radio and radar navigation. Before the revolution, Berg served as a naval offi cer in the Russian Tsarist Navy, commanded the submarines. After the revolution he moved on scientifi c and engineering problems, primarily on the development of radar in navy. In 1937, he was arrested by the NKVD, but was soon released and supported personally by Stalin in the creation of scientifi c radar Institute. Berg became Deputy people’s Commissar of the electrical industry, then Deputy people’s Commissar of defense, the Chairman of the Academic Council on the radar problem. Berg was a strong supporter of the development of Cybernetics, despite the announcement of its bourgeois origin in the early postwar years. In 1961, he became head of the Scientifi c Council of the USSR Academy of Sciences on the problem «Cybernetics». The epoch of Berg was noted by the creation of the fi rst generations of Soviet electronic computing machines (computers). The essay a series of vivid scenes from the life of Berg and his associates. In general, the material of the essay illuminates one of the most important directions of the scientifi c and engineering progress of the post-war Soviet Union. Keywords: cybernetics; A.I. Berg; electronics; engineering progress. Contacts: E-mail: boris@pitt.edu Pp. 023-039.