Safonov A.V., Abramov R.N. “Magic schedule”: implementation of the network planning method in the USSR in the 1960s. Sociology of Science and Technology. 2023. Vol. 14. No. 1. P. 66-86.

Текст статьи на сайте журнала URL: http://sst.nw.ru/Files/2023/2023_1-5.pdf (дата обращения 16.11.2023)

Abstract

The article focuses on the distribution in the USSR of the American project management technology PERT, the core of which is network graphics. The fashion for network graphics swept Soviet departments and organizations in the second half of the 1960s, when network graphics began to be seen as a panacea for failures in the organization of centralized logistics and a universal non-capital- intensive way to improve work efficiency. The authors focus on the processes of circulation of the PERT technology and its translation into the language of Soviet planning and management. Attention is drawn to the speed of this translation, the ways of popularization of PERT and the implementation of the Soviet version of PERT (“SPU System”) in Soviet planning in the field of construction and in the work of the State Planning Committee of the USSR. The second focus of the article is the integration of network graphs with computer technology and planning algorithms. The article shows that the rapid spread of American organizational technology in the USSR was not a simple borrowing, but was accompanied by attempts to adapt it to tasks and management objects that simply did not exist in the homeland of PERT, and this adaptation was double: first, the central authorities formatted the idea of network diagrams under problems of the Soviet economy and tried to implement them by bureaucratic orders and resolutions, and then the performers adapted the instructions issued by him on the introduction of network diagrams to their own needs. Thus, using the example of network diagrams, the thesis is confirmed that the transfer of technologies is accompanied by their modification and adaptation. Materials from archives and Soviet literature of those years are used.