I should probably say a few words about Alexander Lvovich’s legacy over 20-plus years – from his departure to the collapse of the Soviet Union and passing of RTI into private hands. (Now RTI is owned by AFK System – E.P. Yevtushenkov’s empire. This would make Red Army veteran and academician A.L. Mintz turn over in his grave, but I believe that, realistically, this is not such a bad outcome for RTI.)

Over the years RTI was responsible for some of the greatest Russian achievements in radio-electronics: several types of Anti-Missile Radio Radar Warning Systems, and one (but a great one!) offensive RRS “Don-2N” system within Moscow’s Anti-Missile Defense array.

The problems that were being solved by our work on the Anti-Missile Warning RRS and the space control systems were then (as now) quite significant. The idea of building a very complicated and extremely expensive anti-missile defense system for just one city – Moscow – to defend it from nuclear attack with multiple rockets in the cloud of nuclear explosions and false targets - was the subject of much discussion. One interesting problem: it was impossible to conduct a full-scale test of the system, and that led to a strained atmosphere when it came to assessing the overall effectiveness of the AMD system.
Over those same 20 years the country witnessed the ripening of conditions that eventually led to its demise. These events were felt in the electronics field as a whole and at RTI in particular, perhaps even more colorfully and starkly than in other places. If finally we want to learn something from our own history, we need to remember, talk about and study these events.
It seems to me that the first 20 or 25 post-war years (the end of the 60’s – beginning of the 70’s, when the now famous “secret Academicians” – including academician Mintz – creators of military technology, were still working) saw Soviet scientific and technological achievement at its highest point, including a last-ditch effort to mobilize and catch up in industrialization, and the last attempts to demonstrate the competitiveness of the Soviet system, albeit only in the sphere of military technology.
After that, especially when it came to electronics and computers, the country increasingly fell behind the West.
One can only feel glad that Alexander Lvovich did not have to witness how the system that he dedicated his whole life to building, started to rot and decay.

Whole mountains of literature are dedicated to the reasons why the Soviet Union first fell behind, and then collapsed. I want to demonstrate here only a couple of specific circumstances.
Sometime in the middle of the 1960s, a technological revolution, little-noticed in the USSR, took place in the world. Prompted by market forces, the rate of technological change began to outpace the bureaucrats in the military. The trend started in Japan with home electronics. It soon became obvious how hopelessly far behind we were in information and computer technology. I remember at the time when personal computers started showing up in the West, gradually turning into just another home electronics appliance, RTI’s security department was still putting seals on typewriters before the holidays, and trying to ban the use of the first primitive calculators made in Zelenograd because they were “unaccounted for carriers of classified information,” etc. Even the word “personal” had an anti-Soviet ring to it; the first such devices made domestically, few remember them now, were named “mini electronic calculating machines.”
I once described how the first imported PC was acquired by my department at RTI: how many, many days it took to get all the permissions to turn it on, and when it was finally approved, the permission form included a clause that prohibited discussing professional subjects “in the presence of the computer” (pardon me, “in the presence of the mini-ECM”).
A rhetorical question: would the prolonged presence of a talented engineer in an idiotic situation affect his professional abilities? And what about such shameful phenomena as searches?
Over time the role of bureaucracy steadily increased; the absurd regime of secrecy triumphed over efficiency and common sense; people responsible for making decisions disappeared, and everyone was drowning in endless consultations with everyone else, and on the subject of everything. Even the signature of the Institute’s Director or Chief Design Engineer only meant the “approved” document had merited yet another review by the military representative, and sometimes with the regime’s security service. Productivity fell precipitously. “Joblessness beyond the institute security check point,” “Our work is so classified, we don’t even know what we are working on,” “Don’t fuss, relax, our work is doomed to succeed” – these were the running jokes of the 1980s.
The end of it all is well known.

Here’s a typical example of “scientific work.”
With practically unlimited funding allotted to the development of radio radar technology, whole industries were drawn to the field of antenna and microwave research, and that in turn raised an important, but specialized technical problem to the state level. It even came to this: in the 70s, no less than a Soviet-Union-wide (!) Institute of Scientific Research in Radio Measurement was created in the sunny Yerevan (VNIIRI). It fell formally under the auspices of the State Office of Standards, but in effect was run by its creator, named… let’s say Menelai Parisovich. It was a high-status job, being director of a Soviet-Union-wide institute in Yerevan: even not-so-special visitors to his institute were met by a limo that drove right up to the airplane door.

Oh, those unforgettable trips to Yerevan! Garni, Echmiadzin, Gekhard… And the little coffee houses next to the fountain in a shady corners of Yerevan… And the roadside shashlyks and lula-kebabs with young wine… And lake Sevan… And unlimited quantities of the output of the Yerevan Cognac Factory… If not for Menelai Parisovich, I would have never experienced all of the beauty of sunny Armenia, which I haven’t revisited since. Many hundreds of military and civilian workers of the Military-Industrial Complex avidly supported the work of the Institute and were eager to sign contracts with it for any amount of money. Just the same, no one was keeping count of how much money was being spent.
The Institute’s main task was to devise new ways to certify and measure antennas. To this end a huge testing ground was built on top of Mt. Aragats, in harsh, high altitude conditions, with complete disregard for the enormous expense involved. The idea was to bring all of the Soviet antenna devices there for state attestation and measurement.
Well, for some, this was already going too far.
Nevertheless, business trips to see Menelai Parisovich remained a welcome bonus for the “heroes of Communist labor.”
Here is a small delegation from RTI at the high-altitude testing ground. These by the way, were my doctoral students. To the right of me is Valentin Losev, and to the left – Felix Aizin. Judging by our youth, it is no later than the early 80’s. Losev, who towards the end of teh 20st century was awarded the Lenin prize, continued to work at RTI; Aizin hasn’t won a prize, and is working at VympelCom. Later at Menelai’s institute unique measurement standards were developed – unlike any that existed anywhere else in the world – the most impressive being the CDA standard (Coefficient of Directed Action, a unit devoid of dimensions) and the phase standard (measures the angle).

Think about it, reader! Even if you specialize in the humanities, you still should know enough from your studies of the existence of global systems of measurement of the “meter-kilogram-second” type, and of global standards of measurement for these fundamental units. But a “Union-wide standard” of the “DIMENSION-LESS COEFFICIENT”!! And a high-altitude testing ground built just for its sake! A STANDARD FOR ANGLES!! The latter constituted a piece of a standard inductor coil, but gilded and contained in a velvet-lined case. There was also a “learned phase purveyor” with a technical Masters Degree and corresponding salary. At the numerous Union-wide conferences in Yerevan, attended by civilian and military beau monde, all fortified with the products of the Yerevan Cognac Factory, Menelai would repeatedly stress that we had long ago outdone America and were ahead of the whole planet in the area of antenna measurement.

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