In the late 1960s, the Soviet Union and a number of allied countries embarked on a bold attempt to significantly increase their computer technology and catch up to the west, via an ambitious effort to produce a clone of the popular IBM S360 line of mainframes. br br The result of this program was the RYAD line of Soviet mainframes, a whole family of computers that were a significant leap forward for Soviet computing, and a program whose story is a fascinating one both for the ways in which it succeeded as well as the ways in which it fell short.