At the Cybernetics Institute on Kiev's southern edge, Philip Andonand thousands of colleagues toiled for four decades on the largelysecret mission of designing computers for the Soviet Union. In thosedays, they programmed the computers that controlled Soviet nuclearmissiles, fabricated high-tech alloys and automated industries.
The Soviet state, with its penchant for centralization, focusedits computer research in a network of institutes and laboratories inUkraine, largely to serve its huge aerospace and military industrieshere. Now, Andon said, the Soviet collapse has left hundreds ofthousands of Ukrainian computer programmers -- both military andcivilian -- underemployed.
So Andon and many of his colleagues have set a new goal: to makeUkraine the world's next major provider of commercial software.
With the dizzying development of computers, the world is short ofpeople to write programs for them -- a fact that has helped India andChina gain footholds in the U.S.-dominated global software market.Now computer specialists in Ukraine and neighboring Russia -- whichhold the bulk of the former Soviet Union's computer industry -- saythey aim to surpass the Asian software industries.
"We have so many more {computer} resources than India or China,you can't compare us to them," said Andon, the CyberneticsInstitute's director of software systems. Andon and others here sayUkraine has 300,000 to 400,000 formally trained programmers -- "atremendously disproportionate number" for this country of 52 million,said Stephen Minsky, a Ukrainian American who directs CDV, a Kiev-based distributorship for Apple Computers.
But in free markets, Soviet-built strengths tend to be accompaniedby enormous weaknesses. While Ukrainian programmers are technically"top class," they are best at highly abstract and theoretical work,said Guenter Struck, IBM's chief representative in Ukraine. They areused to writing for bureaucracies rather than paying customers, andhave no experience with business plans, commercial deadlines orbottom lines.
"They have to learn about software as a business," Struck said."Software development is an art. It needs creativity as well aslogic."
The United States "is not producing enough qualified {software}engineers," which has led to the global shortage, said Ken Wasch,executive director of the Washington-based Software Publishers'Association. But Ukraine "certainly has been little noticed" as apotential source of software talent, he said.
Despite their isolation from the West during the Cold War,Ukrainian programmers know Western computers and software, which theSoviet Union smuggled in despite export restrictions. And a highproportion of Ukrainians write in advanced computer-programminglanguages, notably in C++, which Western software developers needmost.
Ukraine carries other unproven potential in specific technologiesthat the Soviets developed during the Cold War, Ukrainian and Westernspecialists here said. Ukrainian institutes and laboratories holdlong-secret Soviet accomplishments in naval and aerospace technology,in metallurgy and in teaching computers to recognize handwriting,fingerprints and human speech. But it is unclear how many of thesetools are marketable.
Amid Ukraine's post-Soviet economic depression, programmers areseeking out the world market mainly to keep jobs and supportfamilies. Even advanced Ukrainian pro grammers must survive thesedays by working as accountants and taxi drivers.
But Ukraine's computer industry also is trying to salve a psychicwound from the Cold War. As computers were developed following theend of World War II, Ukraine -- especially Kiev -- became one of theworld's most advanced research centers. But accomplishments here arelittle known in the West -- and were cast aside by the Sovietleadership about 1970, when it ordered Ukrainian institutes to stopdeveloping their own machines and instead copy the West's.
Now, Andon said, Ukraine's researchers are eager to show what theycan do. "We want to do more than just write software on contractsfrom the West," he said. As the world's programmers work to developartificial intelligence -- to teach computers how to learn -- "wehave the research capacity, the theoretical base to compete indeveloping the next generations of software."
For such big dreams, Ukraine is making the smallest of starts."Only a handful {of Ukrainians} are writing code {software} andmarketing it abroad," said Rafal Rohozinski, a Canadian specialist inthe ex-Soviet computer industry who is leading a U.N. project toutilize the Internet in Ukraine. "I know of one guy in Lviv who iswriting code for hospital management" and sending it to his U.S.customer via the Internet, he said.
Western companies with large computer systems -- for example,Chase Manhattan Bank -- have been recruiting top Ukrainianprogrammers to write proprietary software, Rohozinski said.
The most organized effort to develop a commercial softwareindustry is a program backed by Apple Computer to teachentrepreneurial skills to 2,000 Ukrainian programmers a year. TheInitiative for Ukraine program, backed by a U.S. grant, envisions asoftware industry that could generate 100,000 programming jobs and upto $3 billion in export income within five years.
The first 12 of the program's 30 training centers are to open thisfall -- including ones at the Cybernetics Institute and at theDefense Ministry, where its students will be military officers facingdischarge as Ukraine slashes the size of its military.
The Cybernetics Institute reflects the decay of what was theSoviet Union's elite computer industry. As you walk up to its 12-story main building, the broad entrance path is weedy, and a fountainthat once graced the entrance is dry, its paint scabbing off.
In his office, Andon expressed pride and bitterness over Ukraine'scomputer history. It was in Kiev, he noted, that the Soviet Unionbecame the third nation -- after the United States and Britain -- todevelop an electronic computer following World War II. For twodecades, scientists here raced to match the West in computerdevelopment.
"Our big rival was IBM," he said. And a mark of Kiev's success wasthat, in 1967, IBM "bought one of our MIR-1 {computers} -- a veryadvanced machine at the time."
The institute's innovations included an early one-person computerusing a television-like screen with a light pen for its operator."Conceptually, in many ways, we were ahead of the West" in developingthe modern computer, said Volodimir Bilodid, a Ukrainian manager withCDV.
Like most Ukrainian programmers interviewed here, Andon is stillangry about Moscow's orders to abandon their own designs a quarter-century ago.
"This was the great, historic mistake of the Moscow elite," hesaid vehemently. Forced to follow Western designs for two decades,Ukraine's programmers "lost our edge in theoretical work," he said.
Andon seemed embarrassed at the modesty of his institute'scommercial debut. It has just finished converting a software packageby a Hungarian firm, Graphisoft, for the Russian market. Rewritingthe package -- which allows architects to design houses on a computerscreen -- "really was only child's play, an exercise, for us."
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