The development of information in the Soviet Union

Abstract

After the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution, already in the first stage of the young Soviet state, scientific and technical information centres were established by Lenin's initiative, and scientific and technical information activities were started. More and more abstracting and indexing journals were issued in the years of industrialization and of the collectivization of agriculture. The development of documentation and information activities began in a greater extent after the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945). By then, it became obvious that the scientific and technical libraries could not anymore meet growing demande for information; speciel information centres were, therefore, set-up, the most important of them being the All-Union Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (VINITI = Vsesoyuzny Institut Nauchnoi i Tekhnicheskoi Informatsii/.
Thus, the preconditions for emerging of a new scientific discipline were established. This discipline, called informatics, is concemed with the structure and special features of information, with the history, the theory, the methods and the organization of information.
The VINITI, right from its establishment in 1952, has conducted highly important and continuously extending activities in the field of informatics. Thie work includes the research on the theory of information (based upon a number of related disciplines), the development of machine equipment and mechanical processes for information, the organization of national and international conferences on problems of informatics, issuing of publications on informatics, further-more, the training of specialists working in informatics. Besides the VINITI other Soviet information centres and bodies have also actively joined in this work. A detailed survey is given on the results achieved and the work performed in all these fields.