The M-2 was a Soviet stored-program electronic computer developed in 1952 at the Laboratory of Electrical Systems of the Institute of Energy of the USSR Academy of Sciences under the direction of I. S. Brook. The development team, led on a day-to-day basis by M. A. Kartsev, comprised between seven and ten engineers including T. M. Aleksandridi, V. V. Belynsky, A. B. Zalkind, V. D. Knyazev, V. P. Kuznetsova, Yu. A. Lavrenyuk, L. S. Legezo, G. I. Tanetov and A. I. Schurov. The M-2 was the immediate successor to the M-1, the laboratory's earlier and smaller machine, and was one of three major Soviet computers used in defence, scientific and economic computing in the mid-1950s.