9 ms·

I grew up reading this magazine, together with Yunnyi Tekhnik (Young Technologist), Nauka I Zhizn (Science and Life) and, of course, Kvant (Quantum). With all i

I grew up reading this magazine, together with Yunnyi Tekhnik (Young Technologist), Nauka I Zhizn (Science and Life) and, of course, Kvant (Quantum). With all its failings USSR took science and technology very seriously and opened the funnel really wide. That is probably why USSR had nuclear weapons and space technology comparable to United States with half the population and third the money (for the pedants - I made the second ratio up, but you get the idea)

atemerev 9y ago
...and maybe thousands of unsung GRU agents, relentlessly stealing Western military tech. :) The magazines were great, though. The entire generation of engineers were inspired by them. I remember getting the entire cardboard box of issues once — what a happy day!
- izacus 9y ago
  > ...and maybe thousands of unsung GRU agents, relentlessly stealing Western military tech. :) That's kinda really insulting to a lot of excellent engineers and scientist that worked on technology in USSR. Isn't Cold War far enough behind that we can slowly stop with the western propaganda and deliberate attempts to downplay all eastern achievements?
  - nek28 9y ago
    Which is not really an argument as to the veracity of what he said.
    - izacus 9y ago
      Neither does it confirm it (or give a source). I mean yes, technology was "stolen" all the time - from BOTH sides. F-117 stealth technology is based on research done in USSR. In 80ties, the US people happily took a ride in the first MiG-29s delivered to us in the 1980s and "stole" technology from there. And yet, we don't go running around claiming that all USA flight technology achievements are based on CIA agents stealing tech and thus diminishing everything people Lockheed etc. did. If you actually look at declassified primary sources you'll see that a huge amount of effort went into eastern designs as well and the impact of "stolen" technology is actually rather limited due to the differences in approaches of R&D teams.
      - dimitar 9y ago
        There a lot of sources for the GRU stealing military technology. That they were in the Manhattan project is very well known. Enjoy this chapter from a book on the subject of GRU: http://militera.lib.ru/research/suvorov8/04.html http://militera.lib.ru/research/suvorov8/04.html
        izacus 9y ago
        Yes (which is what I said), did you also read the rest of my post. For example for your Manhattan project thing is the classic example of how misleading such simplified outlook on the world can be. GRU stole the information about US atomic bomb, but then the info wasn't really used (because it wasn't trusted) and the USSR bombs ended up being developed independently. See this post for more: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/21zc0v/how_did_the_soviet_union_manage_to_acquire_atomic/cgib6am/?st=j35macia&sh=d82d250d https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/21zc0v/how_d... This is actually a rather common occurence - even in things like USSR copying the US bomber design it showed that the technology and approaches to it were suffciently different that stolen plans weren't really that useful for plain copying. They did provide invaluable direction for R&D of course. Let me be clear - I'm not even remotely claiming that USSR didn't attempt to copy technology or attempt to benefit it. I'm just a bit annoyed at the amount of Americans that reflexively try to erase contributions and hard work of a lot of USSR's engineers and scientists with this naive and simple dismissal. I understand that it's driven by what's effectively 50 years of propagands (from both sides!), but in 2017 we should do better. We have declassified sources now.
        mmjaa 9y ago
        American supremacy depends on American hubris. Without one you can't have the other.
      - PerfectDlite 9y ago
        > F-117 stealth technology is based on research done in USSR That's like saying that all Soviet technology is based on research done in UK and France. You know: Newton, Lavoisier, Pascal, Boyle, Joule... > happily took a ride in the first MiG-29s delivered to us in the 1980s and "stole" technology from there Take a ride == stole technology? Are you serious?
  - dimitar 9y ago
    Well, it is true. The Soviet Union leadership in the highest levels believed that reverse-engineering existing technology is better than recreating it. Obviously, the USSR wasn't going to pay licensing and patent fees to the capitalist West, right? If this is insulting, blame the Politburo and the Central Military Commission. In fact, not reinventing the wheel allowed for the great scientific and engineering achievements that the Soviet Union did have.
    - izacus 9y ago
      Would you mind providing independent sources for that? :)
      - vetinari 9y ago
        Of course, that's why Soviets did put the first man into the space, they did the Venus exploration or they had the first orbital station. Must be due to GRU spying. /s
      - PerfectDlite 9y ago
        For stealing Western tech? Look at glorious Soviet cars, for example. Now look at glorious Soviet massframe computers.
      - stickfigure 9y ago
        That espionage was a major factor in the soviet bomb program seems uncontroversial. Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_atomic_bomb_project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_atomic_bomb_project Richard Rhodes is probably the definitive source for this history in The Making Of The Atomic Bomb and Dark Sun. Both excellent reads. I don't say this to discount the abilities of the Soviet scientists working on the problem; it's an incredible achievement even with the extra "stolen" knowledge. But keep in mind that the US pursued four totally separate technologies for uranium separation and built massively expensive plants for each because they didn't know which was going to work out. The Soviets benefitted by avoiding a lot of very expensive and time-consuming dead ends.
        9y ago
  - PerfectDlite 9y ago
    > a lot of excellent engineers and scientist that worked on technology in USSR. Name me THREE scientific achievements "made in USSR" which ordinary people still use in their daily lives. No, AK machine gun will not do. And sputnik is no go as well - nobody listens to radio beeps nowadays. Can you? Just three of them? Surely, 70 years of scientific achievements will do wonders, right?
    - gm-conspiracy 9y ago
      Soft contact lenses? Synthetic diamonds? That's two off the top of my head.
      - PerfectDlite 9y ago
        Soft contact lenses were invented by Czech scientists. Synthetic diamonds were created by French chemist in 19th century.
        avmich 9y ago
        And of course Russians perfected rocket technology way in XIX century, using solid rockets as a weapon. What are you trying to prove? That inventions aren't done in vacuum and everybody stands on the shoulders of giants coming before him? Or you literally believe that USA had a half century Cold War with opponent who can't invent a thing?
        PerfectDlite 9y ago
        > And of course Russians perfected rocket technology way in XIX century, using solid rockets as a weapon. Russians? Not Chinese or British or Americans, but Russians? I'm amazed on number of Russian myths here.
    - Robotbeat 9y ago
      Yet another lame comment. GPS launched on Atlas V nowadays, which uses the insanely good LOx-rich combustion Soviet engine tech. Until the fall of the Iron Curtain, American engineers believed such technology was basically impossible. It was Soviet metallurgy that made it possible. Everyone's smartphone listens to radio beeps to geolocate.
  - superlopuh 9y ago
    That's kinda really insulting to a lot of really talented spies that risked their lives in the States :)
- Drakim 9y ago
  The USSR was first in space, weren't they? The technological advances of the USSR can't all be stolen unless they first invented time machines.
  - oblio 9y ago
    Well, to be honest, a good chunk of what got both the USA and the USSR into space was "stolen" from Germany, anyway. So no need for any time machines :)
    - izacus 9y ago
      That really downplays all the work both USA and USSR did to scale the V2 designs into something that can get payloads into orbit (and the opposing lands). There are a few good books on what Korolevs teams did which are pretty fascinating in hindsight, especially due to limited access to computers in USSR. (Obviously sources about the US space programs are about 100x more numerous in the western world :) )
    - pps43 9y ago
      Semyorka (the first rocket that delivered a payload to orbit) has very little in common with V2. Fuel, staging, control, launch facilities - pretty much everything is different. The soviets did start by copying the V2, but immediately after that switched to original designs.
    - buzzier 9y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Tsiolkovsky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Tsiolkovsky
- dimitar 9y ago
  Interestingly, in the book I'm currently reading (written by a former GRU officer) it is mentioned that for the GRU interest in science fiction was a definite plus when selecting the most promising young cadres. They believed that this interest showed intelligence and promise. They also appreciated young people good with modeling clay - it showed 'good spacial thinking'.
cesis 9y ago
Also the population ratio doesn't seem to be right - 1991- US population 253M; USSR 293M
- izacus 9y ago
  I think the author wrote the last sentence explicitly to avoid these kind of nitpicks.
oblio 9y ago
Are you sure that the Soviet budget for these activities was really lower than the US one? The US budget (and GDP) were higher, but I'd imagine the vast majority was spent on civilian activities. On the other hand Soviet military expenses - and I think space tech actually fell into this domain - were a huge percentage of their budget, much higher than the US percentage. So I don't think the Soviets actually spent much less than the US on this. Another poster debunked the population numbers before me ;)
- ljf 9y ago
  I didn't read there comment as saying that they spent less money, but that as a country they had less money. Though I may be wrong!
  - RobertoG 9y ago
    Well, for the sake of precision, its own sovereign money is never going to be the problem for a state: you can always make more. What they had was less real resources.
PerfectDlite 9y ago
> That is probably why USSR had nuclear weapons Blueprints stolen from USA. > and space technology _borrowed_ (wink, wink) from Germans.
- thriftwy 9y ago
  You can't steal or borrow a product. What you ship is yours.
  - PerfectDlite 9y ago
    Sure. Good luck trying to sell iPhone copies.
    - thriftwy 9y ago
      Are there any? Making iPhone copies will probably be prohibitively expensive, otherwise China will already make those in numbers. Yes they did some really lame knockoffs but I doubt you can replicate "the iPhone". HN seems to be really out of depth for you.
      - PerfectDlite 9y ago
        > Are there any? Yes. A lot. > Making iPhone copies will probably be prohibitively expensive, otherwise China will already make those in numbers. According to iPhone 7 teardown [0] there's 3x difference in components price and retail price - $220 vs $649. Do you think that everyone in the China and the world missed the opportunity to eat into that kind of margin? [0] - https://9to5mac.com/2016/09/20/649-iphone-7-estimated-to-cost-apple-220-heres-the-component-breakdown/ https://9to5mac.com/2016/09/20/649-iphone-7-estimated-to-cos...
- avmich 9y ago
  > _borrowed_ (wink, wink) from Germans. You can't be serious assuming Germany under fuhrer went close to satellites :) .
pvg 9y ago
I grew up reading these as well and the striking thing to me seems the reverse: how on earth did the Soviet Union, with all the resources, totalitarian control, armies of highly educated scientists and engineers and callous disregard for human life manage to be so profoundly uncompetitive even in key prestige and power fields like space and weapons technology.

atemerev 9y ago

...and maybe thousands of unsung GRU agents, relentlessly stealing Western military tech. :) The magazines were great, though. The entire generation of engineers were inspired by them. I remember getting the entire cardboard box of issues once — what a happy day!

izacus 9y ago
> ...and maybe thousands of unsung GRU agents, relentlessly stealing Western military tech. :) That's kinda really insulting to a lot of excellent engineers and scientist that worked on technology in USSR. Isn't Cold War far enough behind that we can slowly stop with the western propaganda and deliberate attempts to downplay all eastern achievements?
- nek28 9y ago
  Which is not really an argument as to the veracity of what he said.
  - izacus 9y ago
    Neither does it confirm it (or give a source). I mean yes, technology was "stolen" all the time - from BOTH sides. F-117 stealth technology is based on research done in USSR. In 80ties, the US people happily took a ride in the first MiG-29s delivered to us in the 1980s and "stole" technology from there. And yet, we don't go running around claiming that all USA flight technology achievements are based on CIA agents stealing tech and thus diminishing everything people Lockheed etc. did. If you actually look at declassified primary sources you'll see that a huge amount of effort went into eastern designs as well and the impact of "stolen" technology is actually rather limited due to the differences in approaches of R&D teams.
    - dimitar 9y ago
      There a lot of sources for the GRU stealing military technology. That they were in the Manhattan project is very well known. Enjoy this chapter from a book on the subject of GRU: http://militera.lib.ru/research/suvorov8/04.html http://militera.lib.ru/research/suvorov8/04.html
      - izacus 9y ago
        Yes (which is what I said), did you also read the rest of my post. For example for your Manhattan project thing is the classic example of how misleading such simplified outlook on the world can be. GRU stole the information about US atomic bomb, but then the info wasn't really used (because it wasn't trusted) and the USSR bombs ended up being developed independently. See this post for more: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/21zc0v/how_did_the_soviet_union_manage_to_acquire_atomic/cgib6am/?st=j35macia&sh=d82d250d https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/21zc0v/how_d... This is actually a rather common occurence - even in things like USSR copying the US bomber design it showed that the technology and approaches to it were suffciently different that stolen plans weren't really that useful for plain copying. They did provide invaluable direction for R&D of course. Let me be clear - I'm not even remotely claiming that USSR didn't attempt to copy technology or attempt to benefit it. I'm just a bit annoyed at the amount of Americans that reflexively try to erase contributions and hard work of a lot of USSR's engineers and scientists with this naive and simple dismissal. I understand that it's driven by what's effectively 50 years of propagands (from both sides!), but in 2017 we should do better. We have declassified sources now.
        mmjaa 9y ago
        American supremacy depends on American hubris. Without one you can't have the other.
    - PerfectDlite 9y ago
      > F-117 stealth technology is based on research done in USSR That's like saying that all Soviet technology is based on research done in UK and France. You know: Newton, Lavoisier, Pascal, Boyle, Joule... > happily took a ride in the first MiG-29s delivered to us in the 1980s and "stole" technology from there Take a ride == stole technology? Are you serious?
- dimitar 9y ago
  Well, it is true. The Soviet Union leadership in the highest levels believed that reverse-engineering existing technology is better than recreating it. Obviously, the USSR wasn't going to pay licensing and patent fees to the capitalist West, right? If this is insulting, blame the Politburo and the Central Military Commission. In fact, not reinventing the wheel allowed for the great scientific and engineering achievements that the Soviet Union did have.
  - izacus 9y ago
    Would you mind providing independent sources for that? :)
    - vetinari 9y ago
      Of course, that's why Soviets did put the first man into the space, they did the Venus exploration or they had the first orbital station. Must be due to GRU spying. /s
    - PerfectDlite 9y ago
      For stealing Western tech? Look at glorious Soviet cars, for example. Now look at glorious Soviet massframe computers.
    - stickfigure 9y ago
      That espionage was a major factor in the soviet bomb program seems uncontroversial. Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_atomic_bomb_project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_atomic_bomb_project Richard Rhodes is probably the definitive source for this history in The Making Of The Atomic Bomb and Dark Sun. Both excellent reads. I don't say this to discount the abilities of the Soviet scientists working on the problem; it's an incredible achievement even with the extra "stolen" knowledge. But keep in mind that the US pursued four totally separate technologies for uranium separation and built massively expensive plants for each because they didn't know which was going to work out. The Soviets benefitted by avoiding a lot of very expensive and time-consuming dead ends.
      - 9y ago
- PerfectDlite 9y ago
  > a lot of excellent engineers and scientist that worked on technology in USSR. Name me THREE scientific achievements "made in USSR" which ordinary people still use in their daily lives. No, AK machine gun will not do. And sputnik is no go as well - nobody listens to radio beeps nowadays. Can you? Just three of them? Surely, 70 years of scientific achievements will do wonders, right?
  - gm-conspiracy 9y ago
    Soft contact lenses? Synthetic diamonds? That's two off the top of my head.
    - PerfectDlite 9y ago
      Soft contact lenses were invented by Czech scientists. Synthetic diamonds were created by French chemist in 19th century.
      - avmich 9y ago
        And of course Russians perfected rocket technology way in XIX century, using solid rockets as a weapon. What are you trying to prove? That inventions aren't done in vacuum and everybody stands on the shoulders of giants coming before him? Or you literally believe that USA had a half century Cold War with opponent who can't invent a thing?
        PerfectDlite 9y ago
        > And of course Russians perfected rocket technology way in XIX century, using solid rockets as a weapon. Russians? Not Chinese or British or Americans, but Russians? I'm amazed on number of Russian myths here.
  - Robotbeat 9y ago
    Yet another lame comment. GPS launched on Atlas V nowadays, which uses the insanely good LOx-rich combustion Soviet engine tech. Until the fall of the Iron Curtain, American engineers believed such technology was basically impossible. It was Soviet metallurgy that made it possible. Everyone's smartphone listens to radio beeps to geolocate.
- superlopuh 9y ago
  That's kinda really insulting to a lot of really talented spies that risked their lives in the States :)
Drakim 9y ago
The USSR was first in space, weren't they? The technological advances of the USSR can't all be stolen unless they first invented time machines.
- oblio 9y ago
  Well, to be honest, a good chunk of what got both the USA and the USSR into space was "stolen" from Germany, anyway. So no need for any time machines :)
  - izacus 9y ago
    That really downplays all the work both USA and USSR did to scale the V2 designs into something that can get payloads into orbit (and the opposing lands). There are a few good books on what Korolevs teams did which are pretty fascinating in hindsight, especially due to limited access to computers in USSR. (Obviously sources about the US space programs are about 100x more numerous in the western world :) )
  - pps43 9y ago
    Semyorka (the first rocket that delivered a payload to orbit) has very little in common with V2. Fuel, staging, control, launch facilities - pretty much everything is different. The soviets did start by copying the V2, but immediately after that switched to original designs.
  - buzzier 9y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Tsiolkovsky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Tsiolkovsky
dimitar 9y ago
Interestingly, in the book I'm currently reading (written by a former GRU officer) it is mentioned that for the GRU interest in science fiction was a definite plus when selecting the most promising young cadres. They believed that this interest showed intelligence and promise. They also appreciated young people good with modeling clay - it showed 'good spacial thinking'.

cesis 9y ago

Also the population ratio doesn't seem to be right - 1991- US population 253M; USSR 293M

izacus 9y ago
I think the author wrote the last sentence explicitly to avoid these kind of nitpicks.

oblio 9y ago

Are you sure that the Soviet budget for these activities was really lower than the US one? The US budget (and GDP) were higher, but I'd imagine the vast majority was spent on civilian activities. On the other hand Soviet military expenses - and I think space tech actually fell into this domain - were a huge percentage of their budget, much higher than the US percentage. So I don't think the Soviets actually spent much less than the US on this. Another poster debunked the population numbers before me ;)

ljf 9y ago
I didn't read there comment as saying that they spent less money, but that as a country they had less money. Though I may be wrong!
- RobertoG 9y ago
  Well, for the sake of precision, its own sovereign money is never going to be the problem for a state: you can always make more. What they had was less real resources.

PerfectDlite 9y ago

> That is probably why USSR had nuclear weapons Blueprints stolen from USA. > and space technology _borrowed_ (wink, wink) from Germans.

thriftwy 9y ago
You can't steal or borrow a product. What you ship is yours.
- PerfectDlite 9y ago
  Sure. Good luck trying to sell iPhone copies.
  - thriftwy 9y ago
    Are there any? Making iPhone copies will probably be prohibitively expensive, otherwise China will already make those in numbers. Yes they did some really lame knockoffs but I doubt you can replicate "the iPhone". HN seems to be really out of depth for you.
    - PerfectDlite 9y ago
      > Are there any? Yes. A lot. > Making iPhone copies will probably be prohibitively expensive, otherwise China will already make those in numbers. According to iPhone 7 teardown [0] there's 3x difference in components price and retail price - $220 vs $649. Do you think that everyone in the China and the world missed the opportunity to eat into that kind of margin? [0] - https://9to5mac.com/2016/09/20/649-iphone-7-estimated-to-cost-apple-220-heres-the-component-breakdown/ https://9to5mac.com/2016/09/20/649-iphone-7-estimated-to-cos...
avmich 9y ago
> _borrowed_ (wink, wink) from Germans. You can't be serious assuming Germany under fuhrer went close to satellites :) .

pvg 9y ago

I grew up reading these as well and the striking thing to me seems the reverse: how on earth did the Soviet Union, with all the resources, totalitarian control, armies of highly educated scientists and engineers and callous disregard for human life manage to be so profoundly uncompetitive even in key prestige and power fields like space and weapons technology.