Slava Gerovitch
Biographic Data
| ID | 1090746 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Slava Gerovitch |
| GIVEN NAMES | Slava |
| FAMILY NAME | Gerovitch |
| SIGNATURE | GEROVITCH S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1639-4548 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 17 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 13 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
The Kitchen and the Dacha
In the late 1960s and 70s, due to the Soviet regime’s crackdown on dissident activities and rising anti-Semitic policies, many mathematicians from “undesirable” groups faced discrimination and serious administrative restrictions on work and study at top-ranking official institutions. To overcome such barriers, the mathematical community built extensive social networks around informal or semi-formal study groups and seminars, which formed a parall…
The Art and Science of Making the New Man in Early Twentieth-Century Russia
Red Cosmos
Reviewed by: Red Cosmos: K. E. Tsiolkovskii, Grandfather of Soviet Rocketry Slava Gerovitch (bio) Red Cosmos: K. E. Tsiolkovskii, Grandfather of Soviet Rocketry. By James T. Andrews. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2009. Pp. xviii+147. $49/$23. Konstantin Tsiolkovskii (1857–1935), a nearly deaf high school teacher of mathematics and physics in the provincial Russian town of Kaluga, occupies a special place in the mythology of the Spa…
"Why Are We Telling Lies?" The Creation of Soviet Space History Myths
InterNyet
This article examines several Soviet initiatives to develop a national computer network as the technological basis for an automated information system for the management of the national economy in the 1960s–1970s. It explores the mechanism by which these proposals were circulated, debated, and revised in the maze of Party and government agencies. The article examines the role of different groups – cybernetics enthusiasts, mathematical economists,…
Stalin's Rocket Designers' Leap into Space
This article explores the impact of the professional culture of rocket engineering in Stalin’s Soviet Union on the engineering and organizational practices of the space program during the Khrushchev era. The Stalinist legacy and the dual military / civilian character of rocket engineers’ work profoundly affected the identity of this elite part of Soviet technical intelligentsia. Focusing on such notions as control, authority, and responsibility, …
"New Soviet Man" Inside Machine
Soviet propaganda often used the Soviet space program as a symbol of a much larger and more ambitious political/engineering project—the construction of communism. Both projects involved the construction of a new self, and the cosmonaut was often regarded as a model for the “new Soviet man.” The Soviet cosmonauts publicly represented a communist ideal, an active human agency of sociopolitical and economic change. At the same time, space engineers …
From Newspeak to Cyberspeak
In this book, Slava Gerovitch argues that Soviet cybernetics was not just an intellectual trend but a social movement for radical reform in science and society as a whole. Followers of cybernetics viewed computer simulation as a universal method of problem solving and the language of cybernetics as a language of objectivity and truth. With this new objectivity, they challenged the existing order of things in economics and politics as well as in s…
Love-Hate for Man-Machine Metaphors in Soviet Physiology
Argument Every new level achieved by technology attracted the attention of physiologists and turned their thoughts in a new direction; they often unwittingly modeled life processes in the image of contemporary engineering achievements. –(Nikolay Bernshteyn [1958] 1997, 392) This article reinterprets the debate between orthodox followers of the Pavlovian reflex theory and Soviet “cybernetic physiologists” in the 1950s and 60s as a clash of opposin…
Mathematical Machines' of the Cold War
Soviet science in the post-WWII period was torn between two contradictory directives: to `overtake and surpass' Western science, especially in defence-related fields; and to `criticize and destroy' Western scholarship for its alleged ideological flaws. In response to this dilemma, Soviet scientists developed two opposite discursive strategies. While some scholars `ideologized' science, translating scientific theories into a value-laden political …
Russian Scandals”
Korolev
Perestroika of the History of Technology and Science in the USSR
Les changements methodologiques, temporels, thematiques, disciplinaires et geographiques de la technologie et de la science sovietique sont analyses durant la periode de la Prestroika, a partir d'une etude d'un journal traitant des problemes de l'histoire des sciences et des technologies
Mathematical Machines' of the Cold War
Soviet science in the post-WWII period was torn between two contradictory directives: to `overtake and surpass' Western science, especially in defence-related fields; and to `criticize and destroy' Western scholarship for its alleged ideological flaws. In response to this dilemma, Soviet scientists developed two opposite discursive strategies. While some scholars `ideologized' science, translating scientific theories into a value-laden political …
"New Soviet Man" Inside Machine
Soviet propaganda often used the Soviet space program as a symbol of a much larger and more ambitious political/engineering project—the construction of communism. Both projects involved the construction of a new self, and the cosmonaut was often regarded as a model for the “new Soviet man.” The Soviet cosmonauts publicly represented a communist ideal, an active human agency of sociopolitical and economic change. At the same time, space engineers …
"Why Are We Telling Lies?" The Creation of Soviet Space History Myths
Russian Scandals”
Perestroika of the History of Technology and Science in the USSR
Les changements methodologiques, temporels, thematiques, disciplinaires et geographiques de la technologie et de la science sovietique sont analyses durant la periode de la Prestroika, a partir d'une etude d'un journal traitant des problemes de l'histoire des sciences et des technologies
Korolev
Mathematical Machines' of the Cold War
Soviet science in the post-WWII period was torn between two contradictory directives: to `overtake and surpass' Western science, especially in defence-related fields; and to `criticize and destroy' Western scholarship for its alleged ideological flaws. In response to this dilemma, Soviet scientists developed two opposite discursive strategies. While some scholars `ideologized' science, translating scientific theories into a value-laden political …
Russian Scandals”
From Newspeak to Cyberspeak
In this book, Slava Gerovitch argues that Soviet cybernetics was not just an intellectual trend but a social movement for radical reform in science and society as a whole. Followers of cybernetics viewed computer simulation as a universal method of problem solving and the language of cybernetics as a language of objectivity and truth. With this new objectivity, they challenged the existing order of things in economics and politics as well as in s…
Love-Hate for Man-Machine Metaphors in Soviet Physiology
Argument Every new level achieved by technology attracted the attention of physiologists and turned their thoughts in a new direction; they often unwittingly modeled life processes in the image of contemporary engineering achievements. –(Nikolay Bernshteyn [1958] 1997, 392) This article reinterprets the debate between orthodox followers of the Pavlovian reflex theory and Soviet “cybernetic physiologists” in the 1950s and 60s as a clash of opposin…
"New Soviet Man" Inside Machine
Soviet propaganda often used the Soviet space program as a symbol of a much larger and more ambitious political/engineering project—the construction of communism. Both projects involved the construction of a new self, and the cosmonaut was often regarded as a model for the “new Soviet man.” The Soviet cosmonauts publicly represented a communist ideal, an active human agency of sociopolitical and economic change. At the same time, space engineers …
InterNyet
This article examines several Soviet initiatives to develop a national computer network as the technological basis for an automated information system for the management of the national economy in the 1960s–1970s. It explores the mechanism by which these proposals were circulated, debated, and revised in the maze of Party and government agencies. The article examines the role of different groups – cybernetics enthusiasts, mathematical economists,…
Stalin's Rocket Designers' Leap into Space
This article explores the impact of the professional culture of rocket engineering in Stalin’s Soviet Union on the engineering and organizational practices of the space program during the Khrushchev era. The Stalinist legacy and the dual military / civilian character of rocket engineers’ work profoundly affected the identity of this elite part of Soviet technical intelligentsia. Focusing on such notions as control, authority, and responsibility, …
Red Cosmos
Reviewed by: Red Cosmos: K. E. Tsiolkovskii, Grandfather of Soviet Rocketry Slava Gerovitch (bio) Red Cosmos: K. E. Tsiolkovskii, Grandfather of Soviet Rocketry. By James T. Andrews. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2009. Pp. xviii+147. $49/$23. Konstantin Tsiolkovskii (1857–1935), a nearly deaf high school teacher of mathematics and physics in the provincial Russian town of Kaluga, occupies a special place in the mythology of the Spa…
"Why Are We Telling Lies?" The Creation of Soviet Space History Myths
The Art and Science of Making the New Man in Early Twentieth-Century Russia
The Kitchen and the Dacha
In the late 1960s and 70s, due to the Soviet regime’s crackdown on dissident activities and rising anti-Semitic policies, many mathematicians from “undesirable” groups faced discrimination and serious administrative restrictions on work and study at top-ranking official institutions. To overcome such barriers, the mathematical community built extensive social networks around informal or semi-formal study groups and seminars, which formed a parall…
Law (10 works) · Political science (10 works) · Politics (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · History (6 works) · Cybernetics (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Engineering (4 works) · History of Computing Technologies (4 works)