From Russia with Code: Programming Migrations in Post-Soviet Times

by Mario Biagioli (Editor), Vincent Antonin Lépinay (Editor)

While Russian computer scientists are notorious for their interference in the 2016 US presidential election, they are ubiquitous on Wall Street and coveted by international IT firms and often perceive themselves as the present manifestation of the past glory of Soviet scientific prowess. Drawing on over three hundred in-depth interviews, the contributors to From Russia with Code trace the practices, education, careers, networks, migrations, and lives of Russian IT professionals at home and abroad, showing how they function as key figures in the tense political and ideological environment of technological innovation in post-Soviet Russia. Among other topics, they analyze coders' creation of both transnational communities and local networks of political activists; Moscow's use of IT funding to control peripheral regions; brain drain and the experiences of coders living abroad in the United Kingdom, United States, Israel, and Finland; and the possible meanings of Russian computing systems in a heterogeneous nation and industry. Highlighting the centrality of computer scientists to post-Soviet economic mobilization in Russia, the contributors offer new insights into the difficulties through which a new entrepreneurial culture emerges in a rapidly changing world.

Contributors. Irina Antoschyuk, Mario Biagioli, Ksenia Ermoshina, Marina Fedorova, Andrey Indukaev, Alina Kontareva, Diana Kurkovsky, Vincent Lépinay, Alexandra Masalskaya, Daria Savchenko, Liubava Shatokhina, Alexandra Simonova, Ksenia Tatarchenko, Zinaida Vasilyeva, Dimitrii Zhikharevich

384 pages, Hardcover

Published May 3, 2019

Reviews

[Zhenia Vasiliev · Rating 2 out of 5]

Why Russian IT professionals are unsuccessful in business? The problematics of this and other related questions are addressed in From Russia with Code, a collection of essays edited by media and communication scholars Mario Biagioli and Vincent Antonin Lépinay. The book offers an extensive contribution to science, technology, and innovation studies via a series of ethnographic investigations involving Russian software engineers at home and abroad. Coming from a theorisation of programming code as a social phenomenon initially proposed by literary and media scholar Friedrich Kittler, the volume looks at the code’s ability for setting the conditions of possibility of human collaboration in two ways. One side of the argument sees a pattern of failed Russian innovation that prevents the country from modernizing its technology and economy. As the historian of science Loren Graham puts it, to develop a high-technology superpower, Russia needs to adopt a more aggressive profit-oriented or entrepreneurial approach to innovation. The other side of the argument responds that the Western capitalist model is not the only way, and there is value in fostering the tradition of high technical skill and complex problem solving that constitute Russia’s Soviet heritage. The book delivers on its promise of providing a comprehensive multi-sited ethnographic study looking at a variety of geographical locations: Russia, Estonia, the UK, USA, Israel and Finland, and gives a plethora of statistical data and encompasses studies from academic as well as professional IT community. Most importantly, however, it sets the grounds for the wider investigations, such as lessons learned from the Russian historical context, and a possibility of a refreshed critique of global capital stemming from the territorial and cultural divides.