Professor Boris Babayan, 66, entered the world of computer science as a first-year student in 1951, when the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology founded Russia's first computer faculty.

Five years had passed since ENIAC, the world's first modern computer, was built in the U.S.

Babayan soon became known in the West as "the Russian Seymour Cray" and "the father of Russian supercomputing." He is one of the few who masterminded the development of Russia's computer technology -from its first room-sized calculators to modern microchips.

"The Soviet Union's major mistake in the computer technology of the 1970s was the state policy to copy American machines," he said.

"In theory, when you copy computer architecture, you should pay licensing fees and buy software. ... But the Communist Party said: 'No, we'd rather steal the technology and software.'"

"It turned out to be a disaster. People who copied machines did not come through the design process. When Russian engineers only tried to copy a code system, they made very bad machines. When they copied complete designs, the machines became a little better. But they were lagging behind American developments by three to 10 years."

The Elbrus team was assembled to design a Russian defense computer in 1971. Babayan said that the Elbrus series featured many innovations that Western engineers only started to use many years later.

According to him, the Elbrus-1 computer, built in 1978, involved a so-called "super-scalar" approach, something that appeared in the Intel processor only in 1991.

The Elbrus team parted with the state Institute of Precision Mechanics only three years ago. "It became intolerable. We financed the whole institute, but its management was getting more and more envious."

Babayan said that not much changed in his life when he left the scientific institute. "This is the same scientific work. But it is more useful," he said.

- VLADIMIR MERKUSHEV