ABSTRACT
This chapter examines computers, computer sciences, and computer applications in Soviet Estonia and reviews the general development of the field. It explores the development of computers and related fields within the Soviet Union as a whole. Computer science is a young, rapidly advancing discipline that found its modern beginning in the late 1940s in the United States. The field of computer science has evolved from applied and numerical mathematics and electrical engineering. The delays in the acceptance of cybernetics and computers in the Soviet Union had taken their toll, resulting in a five to ten-year lag in Soviet computer technology which still persists. Work at the Cybernetics Institute involves applied mechanics and physical chemistry as well as technical cybernetics and computer sciences. In the 1969-1970 academic years, there were 543 faculty members and 6,068 students at the Tallinn Polytechnic Institute. The planned large-scale utilization of computers in the Estonian economy requires large numbers of qualified specialists: computer-applications analysts, programmers, and operators.
