The Russian Museum That Still Runs on Apple II Computers

There is little more to add about the Apple II at this point. The personal computer became a complete series, and with a production span of 16 years, it essentially put the apple on the map. The Apple II managed to reach schools, libraries, laboratories, and government facilities, but one of its most exotic destinations was the Lenin Museum in Gorki Leninskiye, south of Moscow. The museum opened its doors to the public in 1987, and the entire audiovisual display narrating the last years of the politician and revolutionary still depends on Apple hardware to function.

The idea to build the museum dates back to 1972, but the image of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was in frank decline, not so much because of a loss of popularity, but because of an excess of it. The revolutionary's life had been documented, narrated, and broadcast to the smallest detail. Boris Vlasov, deputy director of the Gorki Leninskiye Museum-Reserve, admits that it was impossible to find new material about Lenin, and the rest was insufficient. Visitors had to be left with their mouths open.

The result was what Vlasov calls "Ideological-Emotional Centers", a series of five reddish-tinted glass cubes that house complete scenes, miniatures, motors, laser projectors, mirrors, Pepper's ghosts, "reel-to-reel" tape players, and images intended to teach historical events. Some of the cubes are as tall as a person, and keeping them running is not an easy task. To be honest, it wasn't even easy at the time of the inauguration, but the first big challenge was building them, and for that they had to look for an external solution, on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

"From Cupertino with Love"

That solution came in the form of the British system Electrosonic ES4000, a hardware-software platform with an Apple II as its central element. This is where politics stepped in: Soviet law prevented direct commercial agreements with foreign companies. The Russian clone closest to the Apple II was the Agat-7, but it needed an external card to run Western software, and the 50-pin card of the ES4000 was not compatible with the 60-pin slots of the Agat. The original Apple hardware had to arrive in the Soviet Union, one way or another.

The agreement was signed through the sales organization Technointorg, which in turn was derived from Beech Compix, a British front for the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Soviet Union, and locally it was the Russian company Cascade that took all the supposed glory. Officially, the platform was "100 percent Soviet", but the control algorithms and programs were written by the Electrosonic team. In fact, that company's logo is on the remote controls of the exhibits.

Even so, local engineers managed to provide the necessary maintenance. The fall of the Soviet Union affected this process (many of the linked companies and agencies disappeared, or completely changed their roles), but the Lenin Museum is still there. The cubes have not been dismantled or upgraded, and they receive tech service twice a year, which requires pulling ex-employees out of retirement to do it properly.

Other explorers of the '80s will reveal that Apple tried to arrive with a much more official profile in the Soviet Union, and sent the very Steve Jobs in 1985 as an emissary, before his chaotic departure from the company. The plan was to sell computers to the National Academy of Sciences, and by extension to all Russian schools, which never materialized due to "certain eccentricities" of Jobs, and a particular public support for Leon Trotsky… but that's another story.

Source: Altas Obscura