On the Reliability of Information

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Abstract
Almost forty years ago in his famous book Cybernetics and Society, Norbert Wiener, the father of cybernetics, wrote, "To live effectively means to live with the availability of correct information." But this did not apply to us. Reliable information is intolerable to a society of "real socialism." It looked favorable only in crooked mirrors. A whole informational other-side-of-the-looking-glass system [zazerkal'e]—TsSU [the Central Statistical Administration] and Goskomstat [the State Committee for Statistics]—was created for this purpose. As V. Kirichenko, the last chairman of USSR Goskomstat, admitted, the methodology of this agency's statistical calculations was designed for political tasks (Kommunist, 1990, no. 3). Special attention was devoted to general indicators of economic development because their main purpose was to demonstrate the "indisputable advantages of real socialism," attainments in the competition with capitalism, and successes in the realization of the "historical task of overtaking and surpassing." Kirichenko declared the need to restore trust in statistics.

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