Pandora's Box, E1: The Engineers' Plot
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN recommends it as a fun, well-made documentary on Soviet planning, Gosplan, and why central control failed.
What it is
The first episode of Adam Curtis's 1992 BBC series Pandora's Box, on the engineers' plot, examining communism in the Soviet Union and the rise and limits of technocratic central planning.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2014 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Recommends bluekeybox · 2014-10 · on “Project Cybersyn and the origins of the Big Data nation”
Related and a very good BBC documentary on the role (and tragedy) of engineering and planning in the USSR: [this video]
Recommends rdtsc · 2015-12 · on “In Soviet Union, Optimization Problem Solves You (2012)”
Speaking of that I recommend watching Pandora's Box documentary. It is fun and pretty well made (although the quality on youtube is rather low). Here is where they start talking about Gosplan -- the central economic planning department: [this video] It is funny to hear how they tried to control things. At some point during Stalin's time they planned how many people to arrest and where. No matter if they were guilty or not. The it talks how they tried to modulate various controls -- they measured success by amount of raw material consumed, so all of the sudden they ended up with oversized couches, and trains were being run for thousands of miles empty just to burn the fuel so everyone can get a bo
Recommends hylaride · 2025-12 · on “The US polluters that are rewriting the EU's human rights and climate law”
The USSR was never economically or scientifically on par with the US. They managed to be relatively competitive in some endeavours by concentrated massive percentages of their national people and resources on certain endeavours (industrialization, space, the military), often with brutal violence. The US was militarily competitive, often with more advanced equipment, at a fraction the economic resources - and did it at the same time as having one of the highest living standards in the world (and often had the positive results of military tech bleeding into the civilian sector, like computers). Magnitogorsk, a massive soviet city built around a steel mill, was essentially built with American e
Cites Detrus · 2015-11 · on “Early 20th Century Technocracy Movement”
Soviet Union tried to do this through 1960's computers, surveys and experts. Adam Curtis "documentary" is the extent of my knowledge on their attempts [this video] It's a monumental complex systems problem. Besides the 1960's computers the Soviets were hampered by their utilitarian ideology that didn't take home decor into consideration.
Cites shimonabi · 2021-07 · on “AI and Communism: Narratives of AI Behind the Iron Curtain”
They tried to use computers to set prices and plan production, but they failed anyway. Adam Curtis had a documentary abouth this: [this video]