FW: A referral question on Soviet humanities-computing archives
Received this query, but do not recall seeing anything about the history of Soviet humanities computing. If you have any leads, please respond directly to Василий Глущенко <admiral.vasily@gmail.com> Tom Thomas Haigh Professor & Chair, UWM History Department Chair, IEEE Computer Society History Committee Director, ACM History Committee Turing Awards Project See more at www.tomandmaria.com/Tom -----Original Message----- From: Василий Глущенко <admiral.vasily@gmail.com> Sent: Monday, July 27, 2026 4:37 PM To: thomas.haigh@gmail.com Subject: A referral question on Soviet humanities-computing archives Dear Professor Haigh, My name is Vasiliy Glushchenko. I am a historian completing a Candidate of Sciences dissertation at the Institute of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences on the history of the digitisation of ancient Greek and Latin texts from the 1940s to the present. I also work as a programmer at the Ivannikov Institute for System Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences. I am trying to locate archival or oral-history evidence for a narrow but persistent gap in the history of computing: Soviet and Eastern European computing centres and information projects that supported libraries, bibliographic retrieval, linguistics, text corpora, or humanities institutes. The existing literature has given me a strong starting point for general Soviet computing and projects such as OGAS. What remains difficult to identify are the people and records documenting the institutional space between Academy of Sciences computing centres, scientific-information organisations such as VINITI or INION, and early work with machine-readable texts. Could you recommend one or two historians, oral-history collections, or archival fonds in which this overlap has been studied or documented? A single person or collection would be enough. I am not looking for a general introduction to Soviet computing, but for a concrete route into the history of text-oriented and humanities-related applications. If this question falls outside your immediate work, a referral to someone within the SIGCIS, IEEE history, or Computer History Museum communities would already be extremely valuable. Best wishes, Vasiliy Glushchenko Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Sciences Ivannikov Institute for System Programming, Russian Academy of Sciences
Hi Tom and all, Earlier this year, I was involved in organising this workshop in Luxemburg called History of Digital History between East and West, https://www.uni.lu/c2dh-en/events/history-of-digital-history-between-east-an... including papers about digital history or computing and history research in the Soviet Union, so this query reminded me that this topic could be of interest here. We are also preparing a collection based on the papers presented. Best wishes, Petri Petri Paju PhD, Title of docent Researcher in the project Imagined Homelands / Kuvitellut kotimaat https://sites.utu.fi/kuvitellutkotimaat/en/ Cultural history department University of Turku, Finland ________________________________________ From: thomas.haigh--- via Members <members@lists.sigcis.org> Sent: Thursday, July 30, 2026 11:14 PM To: members@lists.sigcis.org Cc: 'Василий Глущенко' Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] FW: A referral question on Soviet humanities-computing archives Received this query, but do not recall seeing anything about the history of Soviet humanities computing. If you have any leads, please respond directly to Василий Глущенко <admiral.vasily@gmail.com> Tom Thomas Haigh Professor & Chair, UWM History Department Chair, IEEE Computer Society History Committee Director, ACM History Committee Turing Awards Project See more at www.tomandmaria.com/Tom -----Original Message----- From: Василий Глущенко <admiral.vasily@gmail.com> Sent: Monday, July 27, 2026 4:37 PM To: thomas.haigh@gmail.com Subject: A referral question on Soviet humanities-computing archives Dear Professor Haigh, My name is Vasiliy Glushchenko. I am a historian completing a Candidate of Sciences dissertation at the Institute of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences on the history of the digitisation of ancient Greek and Latin texts from the 1940s to the present. I also work as a programmer at the Ivannikov Institute for System Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences. I am trying to locate archival or oral-history evidence for a narrow but persistent gap in the history of computing: Soviet and Eastern European computing centres and information projects that supported libraries, bibliographic retrieval, linguistics, text corpora, or humanities institutes. The existing literature has given me a strong starting point for general Soviet computing and projects such as OGAS. What remains difficult to identify are the people and records documenting the institutional space between Academy of Sciences computing centres, scientific-information organisations such as VINITI or INION, and early work with machine-readable texts. Could you recommend one or two historians, oral-history collections, or archival fonds in which this overlap has been studied or documented? A single person or collection would be enough. I am not looking for a general introduction to Soviet computing, but for a concrete route into the history of text-oriented and humanities-related applications. If this question falls outside your immediate work, a referral to someone within the SIGCIS, IEEE history, or Computer History Museum communities would already be extremely valuable. Best wishes, Vasiliy Glushchenko Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Sciences Ivannikov Institute for System Programming, Russian Academy of Sciences _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
Hi Petri, THANK you for letting us know about this: the program looked superb! As Fernand Braduel once said, “History is the sum of all possible Histories,” viz it’s SO important — especially when doing comparative work or trying to draw universal conclusions -- to understand as many national histories as possible. Much appreciated and look forward to the Proceedings! Dag ----- Dag Spicer Senior Curator Computer History Museum Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing ACM History Committee 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd. Mountain View CA 94043 “History is a vast early warning system.” — Norman Cousins, American journalist (1915-1990). Join our Mailing List here: https://info.computerhistory.org/subscribe On Aug 2, 2026, at 10:31 AM, Petri Paju via Members <members@lists.sigcis.org> wrote: Hi Tom and all, Earlier this year, I was involved in organising this workshop in Luxemburg called History of Digital History between East and West, https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.uni.lu%2Fc2dh-en%2Fevents%2Fhistory-of-digital-history-between-east-and-west%2F&data=05%7C02%7Cdspicer%40computerhistory.org%7C504ff059c881469a719a08def0bbe28f%7Cb6a9c12a29ee4c5f8f93f0d7a8e2db2f%7C0%7C0%7C639212886931511249%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=Ry4rGCkiC3BefVuzv14QQ1cw0nkgw9sN1Pe9XYoEZ2g%3D&reserved=0 including papers about digital history or computing and history research in the Soviet Union, so this query reminded me that this topic could be of interest here. We are also preparing a collection based on the papers presented. Best wishes, Petri Petri Paju PhD, Title of docent Researcher in the project Imagined Homelands / Kuvitellut kotimaat https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsites.utu.fi%2Fkuvitellutkotimaat%2Fen%2F&data=05%7C02%7Cdspicer%40computerhistory.org%7C504ff059c881469a719a08def0bbe28f%7Cb6a9c12a29ee4c5f8f93f0d7a8e2db2f%7C0%7C0%7C639212886931562049%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=xLTf9sbcUxvzY1A5CnAKRlRN6zgz2BNk4HChxDmpSBU%3D&reserved=0 Cultural history department University of Turku, Finland ________________________________________ From: thomas.haigh--- via Members <members@lists.sigcis.org> Sent: Thursday, July 30, 2026 11:14 PM To: members@lists.sigcis.org Cc: 'Василий Глущенко' Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] FW: A referral question on Soviet humanities-computing archives Received this query, but do not recall seeing anything about the history of Soviet humanities computing. If you have any leads, please respond directly to Василий Глущенко <admiral.vasily@gmail.com> Tom Thomas Haigh Professor & Chair, UWM History Department Chair, IEEE Computer Society History Committee Director, ACM History Committee Turing Awards Project See more at https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tomandmaria.com%2FTom&data=05%7C02%7Cdspicer%40computerhistory.org%7C504ff059c881469a719a08def0bbe28f%7Cb6a9c12a29ee4c5f8f93f0d7a8e2db2f%7C0%7C0%7C639212886931599072%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=ohRatjgHbYPglrHYGSSWvx2wLrcJkB25Bkf0yNMY910%3D&reserved=0 -----Original Message----- From: Василий Глущенко <admiral.vasily@gmail.com> Sent: Monday, July 27, 2026 4:37 PM To: thomas.haigh@gmail.com Subject: A referral question on Soviet humanities-computing archives Dear Professor Haigh, My name is Vasiliy Glushchenko. I am a historian completing a Candidate of Sciences dissertation at the Institute of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences on the history of the digitisation of ancient Greek and Latin texts from the 1940s to the present. I also work as a programmer at the Ivannikov Institute for System Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences. I am trying to locate archival or oral-history evidence for a narrow but persistent gap in the history of computing: Soviet and Eastern European computing centres and information projects that supported libraries, bibliographic retrieval, linguistics, text corpora, or humanities institutes. The existing literature has given me a strong starting point for general Soviet computing and projects such as OGAS. What remains difficult to identify are the people and records documenting the institutional space between Academy of Sciences computing centres, scientific-information organisations such as VINITI or INION, and early work with machine-readable texts. Could you recommend one or two historians, oral-history collections, or archival fonds in which this overlap has been studied or documented? A single person or collection would be enough. I am not looking for a general introduction to Soviet computing, but for a concrete route into the history of text-oriented and humanities-related applications. If this question falls outside your immediate work, a referral to someone within the SIGCIS, IEEE history, or Computer History Museum communities would already be extremely valuable. Best wishes, Vasiliy Glushchenko Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Sciences Ivannikov Institute for System Programming, Russian Academy of Sciences _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. 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participants (3)
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Dag Spicer -
Petri Paju -
thomas.haigh＠gmail.com