About the book: year / The deplorable state of Soviet computing technology today, as they say, is obvious. Taking a quick glance at this once glorious empire, the homeland of the famous BESMs, which gave the world so many outstanding engineers - specialists in the computer field, you see only the smoke of a conflagration. Everything burned down!..No, somewhere there seems to be life still glimmering. Here are the remnants of NICEVT under the IBM flag, here is INEUM, also still alive... And yet these are fire victims. However, as it was clear to Griboedov, the smoke of the fatherland is sweet and pleasant to us. Let's take another look at our native ashes. If we are not consoled, then at least we will answer some questions. For example: did we have an alternative to the Western path in computer engineering, as there was in the astronautics and defense industry? Or was copying IBM inevitable for us, just as Western liberalization turned out to be the only way out in politics and economics? Or maybe the liberalization of the 90s became inevitable after the general turn to IBM architecture in the late 60s?