Lebedev moved to Moscow in 1950 and became head of a new computer research group. He started over again training the new technicians and telling them about the BESM (БЭСМ) Bolshaya Elektronno-Schetnaya Mashina or High Speed Electronic Calculating Machine. He swapped teaching students about digital computers for their help in building the new machine.

Because of the success of the MESM a second computer project was started in Moscow to compete with Lebedev's BESM. In a free market competition would be natural but in a planned economy it too had to be planned. In this case the competition would be more political than technical. Repeatedly Lebedev's project suffered because the alternative project - Strela (arrow) - managed to secure scarce resources. Both machines were destined for completion at the start of 1953. Lebedev's design was very similar to the MESM - a three-address 39-bit floating point machine. The memory was to be based on CRT storage devices 1024 words in size. Each CRT could only hold 1024 bits so at least 39 tubes would be needed. As you can guess CRT tubes were in short supply, as were standard valves. For a brief period the valve shortage was solved by the ingenious offer of the BESM acting as a test site for the output of the factory. Unfortunately the Strela project had managed to secure the only source of CRT tubes and so the BESM lacked a memory. Lebedev was forced to redesign the memory to work with mercury delay lines.

In early 1953 the BESM was ready to be used but with the delay line memory it only managed 1000 operations per second. The Strela worked at 2000 operations per second and had a simpler command structure and less external storage. Even with its electrostatic storage it was a very definitely less powerful machine but because of political influences BESM did not get the support it needed and deserved. The Strela was designed to be mass produced and it did go into full production - the first commercial Russian computer. BESM did eventually get its CRTs and using these its performance jumped to 7000 to 8000 floating point operations per second. However the CRT tubes were delivered just at the point where they were almost obsolete. Experiments with core memory had proved the technology and soon after BESM was fitted with a 1K x 40 bit core memory. BESM was a powerful machine and was soon being used for fundamental scientific calculations - orbits of planets and asteroids and even advanced projects such as machine translation and chess playing. Despite the restrictions of a small main memory the experience with BESM was sufficient to convince many that a new machine age had dawned.

After the BESM came the M20 and the BESM 2 - both were mass produced from 1959 on. Compared to the computers available in the West at the same time neither were top performers. The IBM 709 for example was twice as fast and had more memory. Transistors and core memories were common on machines before they were extensively used in any Russian machines. Production problems were the main reason for the lag.

There is of course the question of how original Lebedev's work was. At the time he was thinking about building a stored program machine in 1947 there were articles available on the ENIAC and Von Neumann's report on the EDVAC was available in 1945. However it is unlikely that Lebedev had access to these sources. Certainly building MESM was not just a matter of copying the blueprints of Western machines - even when the Russians tried this some years later the results didn't work because of component differences.

It is possible that Lebedev did receive intelligence from the KGB and the question of the independence of the invention of the stored program computer has to remain open - but when  Russia planned to catch up in computing by explicitly cloning the 360 series Lebedev was very much against it. He always believed that a Russian designed machine would be better. He didn't make a vast fortune from a computer company - but he did get the Order of Lenin - three times.

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