How Two American Spies Built Soviet Silicon Valley
Have you ever wondered what happens to spies after they are exposed? I mean, if they even manage to leave the country on time. And if their former employers themselves have not decided to get rid of them. That's probably how most of you picture a spy's retirement: a quiet lakeside house, a rocking chair, and absolutely no worries. These two guys ran away from the U.S. to the Soviet Union at a fairly young age, so this was not an option for them. Alfred Sarant and Joel Barr were the only people from the spy ring of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who managed to avoid punishment. When they arrived to the USSR they were given their own laboratory in which they could do what they loved. They really loved integrated circuits and microelectronics. And this lab was so successful that it eventually grew into a city of Zelenograd, which many have called nothing less than Soviet Silicon Valley.
Joel Barr and Alfred Sarant had much in common. They were staunch Communists whom Julius Rosenberg recruited to spy for the Soviets. They were good friends and even shared an apartment at one point during their espionage years. And they were both electrical engineers who, worked on military radar technologies in the U.S. The cascade of arrests that followed Klaus Fuchs' confession in early 1950 nearly engulfed Barr and Sarant. But they both managed to escape to the USSR. Nothing more was heard from Barr and Sarant for over three decades. Then, in 1983, a Russian researcher at Harvard linked Barr and Sarant to two leading Soviet scientists, both of whom were native English speakers. Joseph Veniaminovich Berg claimed to be South African, while Philip Georgievich Staros held he was of Canadian descent. As it turns out, Barr and Sarant had ultimately reached Czechoslovakia, where the Soviets had set them up as Berg and Staros, respectively. The Russians eventually moved them to Leningrad, where they became top researchers in a military electronics research institute and reportedly launched the Soviet microelectronics industry.
00:00 - Introduction
02:00 - Rosenbergs case
05:27 - Soviet Silicon Valley
13:17 - Problems of Soviet Microelectronics
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Hey there. Somehow you found my video and decided to watch it. So let me introduce myself. I'm Sergei and I'm from Russia. My channel is about my native country. I want to tell English-speaking viewers about the real Russia, about its past and present. Unfortunately, you can find a lot of propaganda about Russia on the Internet, both from the Russian media and from the Western ones. I want to tell you about Russia, as it really is, the country in which I was born, grew up, and lived all my life.
Sources and additional articles (English&Russian):
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https://controlengrussia.com/retrospe...
Steven T. Usdin. Engineering communism : how two Americans spied for Stalin and founded the Soviet Silicon Valley. – Yale University Press New Haven & London, 2005
https://controleng.ru/wp-content/uplo...
http://it-history.ru/images/6/62/10_o...
https://www.electronics.ru/journal/ar...
Shogren, Elizabeth, "Soviet Defense Pioneer Trades Communism for Social Security," Roanoke Times and World News, Oct. 15, 1992.
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Марк Гальперин. Прыжок кита / М. Гальперин. – СПб.: Политехникасервис, 2010. – 352 с.
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