How No to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet chronicles the history of networked Soviet computing, starting with cybernetic skepticism in the USSR in the early 40s to the boom in science spending after Stalin’s death. It charts failed reform, and paints a picture of the shape of Soviet bureaucracies.

It talks about the meetings that boosted and the meetings that killed the OGAS project, the Soviet attempt at a networked command economy, highlighting just how many little things stood in the way of the project, mostly circumstantially in the way, not oppositional.

The thesis laid out at various times in the book is that American capitalists succeeded in creating the Internet because they behaved like socialists, and Soviet socialists failed because they behaved like capitalists. I don’t agree with this, but I also think that this is not the point the book actually makes: there is more of a focus on the effects of dysfunctional bureaucracies, intra-field rivalry, diffusion of accountability, and institutional conservatism than of qualities and impacts of capitalism and Soviet socialism.

At many points, the book is overly structured (lots of “in this chapter” and clunky topic sentences, conclusions and introductions), I suspect in part due to Peters’ very academic background. He’s clearly super knowledgeable about Soviet cybernetics and the history of the OGAS project (and may be the only English speaker with this level of understanding), but his writing can at times make it difficult to feel engaged. I found the subject so interesting, but felt myself dissuaded from reading by the chunkiness of the prose.

This book was chosen by a book club I am part of, and I’m really glad I had that obligation to push me to keep reading it, because, despite the weakness of the prose, it is a profoundly interesting story, and carries with it important lessons on institutional cultures and topologies.