Wiring Femininity: The Model Microelectronics Factory in Late Soviet Tashkent, Uzbek SSR

• In Event: Laboring Bodies, New Soviet Subjects: Socialist Imaginaries at the Peripheries of Science, Medicine, and Technology

Abstract

The history of computing in the Central Asian context has been assigned to a triple peripheral status: It is not only geographically remote, but is overshadowed by the received narratives of Soviet failure pre-1991 and of Chinese exports since the independence of the former Soviet republics. This article offers a pioneering study of the Uzbek microelectronic factory “Algorithm,” built in the late 1970s and still operational in the 1990s. This computerization project belongs to the local drive to modernize the city of Tashkent following the 1966 earthquake as well as to a geopolitical frame of Cold War imperatives. The anti missile defense systems of the late 1970s put great demands on the Soviet electronics industry. While the birthplace of Soviet computing, the Moscow based ITMiVT was famously responsible for the design of the multiprocessor supercomputer “Elbrus-2,” a new microscheme factory servicing this supercomputer project was to benefit from the defense funding and the technologies imported from Finland. Paying attention to both the shop floors and residential spaces, the article will address the relationship between the built environment, computation, and the formation of the late Soviet feminine subject. The story of the factory also reveals a local variant of global labor trends: the images of lab coat cladded women testify that Uzbeck microelectronics was no different from the worldwide feminization of the industry but with a twist of promoting late Soviet modernity. Drawing on oral histories with female workers, the paper contributes to the convention theme by reflecting on memory as a key historical method.

Author

• Ksenia Tatarchenko, Singapore Management U (Singapore)