The Murky History of Soviet-Born Tetris
thereader.mitpress.mit.edu83 points by EA-3167 2 days ago
83 points by EA-3167 2 days ago
>Ironically, Tetris’s success began because the totalitarian Soviet regime did not recognize what we take for granted in the West: the freedom to publish. After Pajitnov adapted Golomb’s geometric discoveries for the nascent digital world, he had no choice but to distribute his game as a samizdat
Samizdat very specifically refers to censored texts. Yeah sure various versions of Tetris informally circulated around on floppies/tapes just like all other games and software, but that's not samizdat and had nothing to do with freedom to publish or censorship, there just weren't many viable ways to distribute the software to private users (and not many of those to begin with). It was way too long ago and I don't remember if any Soviet magazines like Radio had actual listings, but Tetris was a popular game in them.
did not make it fast enough
The parent comment already removed the part about vinyl recordings, but I still really want to point out that people in the USSR had to be creative (have to be even now) to bypass censorship.
This created things like roentgenizdat or "ribs" (gramophone recordings made from polyester X-ray films)
> This created things like roentgenizdat or "ribs" (gramophone recordings made from polyester X-ray films)
This is a plot point in the excellent Star City, a spin-off of For All Mankind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_City_(TV_series). Also see this project by English musician Stephen Coates: https://www.x-rayaudio.com/
Yeah I edited it out because it had a different name, and more importantly there were totally different circles of people. It wasn't a single underground community or something like that. Later on there were VHS clubs ("video salons"), completely different people again. Some describe all that as samizdat but it really wasn't. Article's mention of Solzhenitsyn in the same sentence with Pajitnov makes little sense.
> Samizdat very specifically refers to censored texts.
No, samizdat was not just about censored texts. The larger point of samizdat is specifically about viable ways to distribute your stuff even if it was not seen even by a single censor. It was even used for cooking recipes and fanzines.
The point is that in USSR it was not possible for an ordinary person to publish anything because the equipment and how to use it was a state secret tightly controlled by KGB. If you wanted to publish something you made and didn't have a cozy relationship with the communist party, samizdat was the only option.
>The point is that in USSR it was not possible for an ordinary person to publish anything
That's another extreme and just wrong. Of course if you were a dissident or just had wrong friends you couldn't even publish a cookbook, but plenty of non-members of either the party or the writers union were publishing their stuff, see Kir Bulychev as a notorious example or an ordinary guy with the disdain for the party (and his father was a lawyer thrown out of the party and his grandfather fought in the White Army, so he was certainly "на карандаше") who nevertheless was one of the most popular Soviet science fiction writers. Or Genrikh Altov (known to some HN users for his TRIZ) who was a political prisoner and had a conflict with the union.
So yeah, it was possible. Before 1987 your stuff had to pass the editorial board and литование by the censorship body, and of course you must not have been viewed as disloyal or suspicious. Travelers, beginner writers, critics, etc. all published their stuff. I have a 1982 fungi reference book written in Ukrainian by a non-member of either the union or the party, just a long-time amateur outdoorsman.
In any case, games were freely published. Magazines in particular routinely published listings sent by random readers.
For a decent documentary tracing the creation of Tetris, and the machinations that eventually brought it to the west (taking out part of Maxwell's Mirror empire along the way), find BBC4's "From Russia With Love". Last I checked it was available in full on Youtube, those of us in the UK can no doubt get it on iPlayer.
> What’s more, it had been designed and coded in a state artificial-intelligence research lab tightly controlled by the KGB
Hmm, according to Wikipedia this happened in the Computational Centre for the USSR Science Academy. As far as I know it was never a "closed" institute, so the article is over dramatising it at least.
The Game Boy version of Tetris was entirely made by Nintendo R&D1 in Kyoto. It only used the licensed concept.
A sort of oddly opinionated article despite having little citation to it and being rather vague on events and timelines compared to some other pieces out there. I’d love to know why for example, the author finds it so clear that Pajitnov should not have won a copyright. I don’t have any stake in it myself, the claim just isn’t supported in the article. I think this is the 4th or 5th retelling of this story I’ve come across now.
Looks like he developed the original on his employer's equipment during work hours.
And the copyright on tetris pieces is just ridiculous given the Colomb's publication and probably others.
I personally appreciated the write-up as it presents an alternative to the glossed up candy narrative that I have read and seen more than once.
Didn't know about Gerasimov either (who single-handedly coded up the DOS version it seems).
Gerasimov wrote his own account of the Tetris story here: https://vadim.oversigma.com/Tetris.htm
> Contrary to the claim attributed to Henk Rogers there were no "straightforward business arrangement" between Pajitnov and myself. In the Soviet Union, where private business was outlawed and the concept of intellectual property was not defined, people could not make private business arrangements of this kind. The Computer Center of Academy of Sciences owned everything we made. Several years later the situation in the Soviet Union changed, but this was a different story. When I worked on Tetris, even a government organization could not formally hire me because I was underage. I worked on Tetris just for fun. I don't remember Pajitnov ever paying me for anything related to Tetris either. Pajitnov started fixing the business aspects of the situation a few years later when he and Henk Rogers participated in negotiations with Elorg (the only government organization in the USSR that could sell software abroad). Pajitnov stopped by my home and asked me to urgently sign a paper "to get lots of money for us from game companies". He didn't leave me a copy of the paper. As far as I remember the paper was saying that I agree to only claim porting Tetris to the PC, agree to give Pajitnov the right to handle all business arrangements, and refuse any rewards related to Tetris. I did not entirely agree with the content, but I trusted Alexey and signed the paper anyway. In a few months my name disappeared from all newly released versions of Tetris and all Tetris-related documents. Alexey registered a US copyright (R/N PA-412-170) referencing the free PC version of Tetris (original version 3.12) we developed together.
Oh sure, I don’t necessarily disagree at all. I was mostly hoping for more detail in why - was the original court’s decision that the game’s production as work material or work hours wasn’t valid because it was in Soviet Union and that was either no longer in existence, or perhaps there was some other line of reasoning. I also think there’s been a tendency to create a bit of a narrative out of the whole situation, and I appreciate another view. I have heard of Gerasimov, you might like this short article (Edit: also linked below and quoted as I was typing this up, sorry) he wrote from I don’t remember how long ago, but I think I’ve read it before. For his part, he seems to feel here that pajitnov cut him out unfairly.
> the Trump administration released a politically charged clone of Tetris called Build the Wall.
Knowing that the principle of Tetris is to destroy the walls that form when the shapes land, I start to wonder what was the winning condition of this version
In corrupt countries roads are built by specific companies and never last long.
Tetris: The Games People Play 2016 graphic novel by Box Brown is pretty good too.
> A major instrument of that victory had been the spread of Western culture
That's the political fluff. The important thing was the spread of capitalism and its accompanying legal institutions such as trademark and copyright - which Tetris definitely represented.