Deputy of the House of Representatives Igor Marzaliuk mentioned the alleged birthplace of the first Soviet computer on November 21, 2024, speculating during the "Speak Up" program on "Belarus 1" TV channel on the importance of Belarus' contribution to the development of the USSR.
"This is the greatness of the Soviet historical tradition. Where was the first Soviet computer created? In Minsk, wasn't it?" said Marzaliuk.
The first Soviet computer was created in Kyiv at the Institute of Electrical Engineering of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. It was called MESM, short for “Small Electronic Calculating Machine” in Russian. The development was led by academician Sergey Lebedev.
The development began in 1948, and the first functional version was brought into operation in 1951. After that, the machine was further developed in other republics of the USSR.
The first computer in the world, the ENIAC, appeared in the United States a few years earlier — in 1946.
Minsk was the birthplace of the most mass-produced early Soviet computer, but not of the first ever made. These machines were "Minsk" series computers. They made up more than half of the entirety of computing machines in the USSR at that time. Their production started in 1960 at the Minsk Calculating Machines Plant, later renamed the Minsk Computer Plant named after Ordzhonikidze. Its former location is now home to the “Impuls” shopping center in Minsk, near the Komarovskiy market.