I've seen many people on this site talk about how if Andropov lived longer he could have prevented the collapse of the USSR or at least increased its odds of survival. I'm curious as to what his reforms were that people here mention.
I've seen many people on this site talk about how if Andropov lived longer he could have prevented the collapse of the USSR or at least increased its odds of survival. I'm curious as to what his reforms were that people here mention.
Building off what you said, I think cybernetics could have made the all the difference for the sustainability of socialism in the USSR. I can't be too harsh on Soviet leadership, since we have the benefit of hindsight. But still, my interpretation of the situation follows: by the 1960s, the Soviet economy really did need significant reform. Khrushchev's answer was a form of market socialism to get more consumer goods to the people - which if I'm feeling generous, I suppose could have been an acceptable solution had the implementation been (a lot) better. But the cybernetic solution was on the table. The Soviet leadership was told cybernetic investment would eventually be hugely beneficial BUT it would be similar to the investment in the space program, which was a lot. Leadership balked at the cost and went with Corn Man's discount market socialism. More about all that here
when we say cybernetics, are we just talking investing in computers?
my exact question, thank you.
like what are talking about here, what do we mean by cybernetics?
I'm imagining that it involves maintaining much more of the central planning that USSR had before the market reforms, but using computers to do the calculations. Soviets had been determining production quotas, prices, wages etc with a bunch of smart people, pencils and paper.
Kind of, but it's more about management. Cybernetics is about autonomy and reacting to things on the fly. It's about the constant flow of information and feedback. Like you set some goals to the factories you manage, they manage their thing autonomously and just send daily or weekly key numbers so that central command can see if there's a problem and help adjust goals or involve additional resources quickly.
Computers are important but for example in Chile they used cybernetic principles to manage the economy successfully and at most they had something like fax machines.