This was a fascinating article, because I've seen so many results of the Eastern Bloc reverse-engineering efforts basically founder into obscurity. Many of these re-created (sometimes with minor variations, or quite novel and ingenious implementation choices) computers were made in small series, but could not compete against illegal imports, and in any case would only be briefly popular in their local university town…
Quite a few words in Bulgarian are similar to words in other European languages, just written in a different alphabet. I briefly dated a girl in Bulgaria years ago and was surprised at how quickly I could find my way around by reading street signs, applying knowledge of French and German, etc. The author asks why did the communists always clone things despite having engineers who could have designed their own? You do…
For those unfamiliar (not Mike based on his observations about Star Trek’s economy), absent a working price system, no rational method for economizing, i.e., choosing between alternatives, exists. When building a railroad, do you go around the mountain or tunnel through it? Who knows? Take away the profit-loss test, and the loudest, most aggressive thug in the room wins out, which Mike noted the history of communist countries as confirming.
Understanding the economic calculation problem reveals why communists had to copy or steal not just the technology but even its prices. Granting the extreme of an entire country full of perfectly obedient “new Soviet men” — which emphatically did not exist, as shown by the common saying “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us” — Maximum Leader is in the dark without prices; he doesn’t know what to command them to build! So he does the next best thing: crib off someone else’s paper.