Fastest computer in Europe at its completion (~8,000 ops/s)
Lebedev's BESM-1 at the Moscow ITMVT becomes operational (1952/53), reaching about 8,000-10,000 operations per second after a memory upgrade, near parity with the West at the very top. Institute rivalry had initially forced it onto slow mercury delay-line memory while the faster CRT tubes went to the Strela team.
After Lebedev steps back, the institute is said to have chosen Vsevolod Burtsev's Elbrus concept over a BESM-10 proposal. Lebedev himself had argued heatedly against a multiprocessor Elbrus; Glushkov backed both. The supercomputer line is named after the mountain Lebedev climbed at 35.