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People write this glibly without understanding history. Soviet Russia made great leaps in science and technology where it was a national priority. You can have

• tryptophan 8y ago
  Have any examples? As far as I am aware, the USSR only beat USA at getting into space first.
  • jacquesm 8y ago
    The Russians had a head start in various materials sciences knowledge, notably metallurgy.
  • timonovici 8y ago
    They also had great chemists and physicists. Many of them were awarded nobel prizes, so you can look it up.
  • deepnotderp 8y ago
    Soviet materials science was quite advanced. Mechanical engineering and weapons technology was also advanced.
  • tormeh 8y ago
    The NK-33 engines from 1960s and 70s Soviet Union were used by American space companies as late as 2014. These were just stuck and forgotten in a Russian warehouse. Doubtlessly other Soviet technology has also been lost and awaits rediscovery. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NK-33 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NK-33
    • jonhendry18 8y ago
      Not sure if that's a testament to innovation, or to the American tendency to throw things away. American engines of the same vintage probably would have been used if they were available for a similar price.
      • blattimwind 8y ago
        It's not just about the price; these engines are still highly competitive fifty years after they were designed. That's quite a feat. They're also based around unique technology.
• gaius 8y ago
  There is a good book Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars about this. Imagine the dilemma: you are a nuclear physicist and Lenin says that atoms are indivisible. What do you do? (This really happened)
  • the-dude 8y ago
    You fuse two atoms.
    • gaius 8y ago
      You look Stalin in the eye and tell him he has to choose between Marxism-Leninism and having an atom bomb...
      • the-dude 8y ago
        That is unfair : you have read the book!
        • gaius 8y ago
          It’s not clear why Lenin felt the need to state this, he obviously didn’t know anything about it, but he did, and so it became the official position of Soviet science. But Stalin was nothing if not pragmatic so...
• RamshackleJ 8y ago
  TLDR; But the soviets lost. I'm not an expert in soviet history but I feel like their efforts around science and technology were economically unsustainable and almost all of them were directly or tangentially related to the military. I don't remember the soviets exporting consumer goods to the west. Academic freedom isn't the only freedom that scientists and engineers care about. I don't doubt that china can spend a ton of money, trap its engineers/scientists and use its media machine to try to keep its population focused on nationalism. I just think that if that didn't work for the Soviets it wont work for China. That said china's current system will probably work great right until it doesn't. Idk I'm just some person on a computer though....
  • tomcam 8y ago
    Please explain downvotes?
    • frockington 8y ago
      My experience with hacker news is that comments with China mentioned in a not so positive way will result in a flood of initial downvotes. As to the the why, I haven't a clue
      • mistermann 8y ago
        My observation is that on certain topics, HN votes and comments become largely based on ideological stances rather than objective reality. Take this thread for example: "the culture that creates new tech is something that china can't steal and it can't replicate it without giving up authoritarian rule" This truism that China "can't innovate" because they live under an authoritarian government is very commonly believed on HN, but it's nothing more than an opinion. However, if you were to suggest to these same people that China is a poor source for sourcing immigrants, because <some unique characteristic of China>, the logical parts of their brains would fire into action and point out how "wrong" that statement is, for obvious reasons. A lot of people, including people on HN, passionately believe things that are absolutely contradictory, and they vote accordingly.
  • 8y ago
• lainga 8y ago
  They also slid backwards several decades in agronomy, and possibly caused famines, when that was a national priority. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko
• avmich 8y ago
  Soviet Russia had a rather different trajectory than China. By the 1917 Russia had significant ties with Europe, which helped both economically and scientifically. Having good pre-revolution scientific schools helped to maintain the lead in hard sciences - military tech like planes and artillery. Then achievements were also demonstrated in rockets and space (up to orbital stations), nuclear area (competing program for nuclear power plants, thermonuclear weaponry, particle accelerators), quantum physics (e.g. lasers), computers and material science (friction welding and Al-Li alloys come to mind as examples). It could be possible to maintain lower level of life comfort while keeping the "academic part" competitive, if the world outside USSR wouldn't demonstrate that a better life is possible. So, I think for some time USSR could maintain the lead, which it did, but then it wasn't enough. China has tremendous advantage in number of people - 4x compared to USSR - and way better economical system, but disadvantage in scientific schools traditions (which it tries - up to a point - to improve) and similar problems with freedoms. Improving scientific level takes time and may lead to conflicts with societal limitations. China may have some years - or even decades - before such problems will become critical.
• baybal2 8y ago
  >Soviet Russia made great leaps in science and technology Yes, we sent rockets to the moon, but an average Ivan couldn't have proper plumbing in his apartment. Those great leaps were made in things without real life value. P.R. China on other hand, can't be bothered with "prestige project." The only thing that can bother a government official here is money. And money undoubtedly have value in everyday life... unlike moon rovers.
  • vkou 8y ago
    Meanwhile, in the United States, we can figure out how to send a robot to kill a family on the other side of the world, but we can't figure out how to supply drinking water in Flint. Human welfare is always a priority that competes with 'national interests'.
  • rm_-rf_slash 8y ago
    I want to pick at your “moon rovers” comment because I think it’s somewhat misguided (although, yes, it does apply specifically to Chinese government officials). One of the reasons that the United States won the race to the moon (while definitively losing the race to space and manned space flight) was because we were the first to dump exorbitant sums of money into the hot (and extremely expensive) new kid on the computing block: integrated circuits. Before ICs, computer parts were often hand-welded, which NASA determined was too failure-prone to reliably control the lunar lander, as such a device had to be able to handle shaking, cosmic radiation, temperature shifts, extreme G-forces from liftoff, and so on. For that same reason, the Soviets were also unable to complete a reliable lunar lander before the Americans, regardless of their past successes with spaceflight. NASA’s immense investment in integrated circuits greatly accelerated their adoption, and as a result, computers became much faster, and much cheaper, than ever before. The history of computing goes straight through the Apollo 11 lunar lander, which does not get nearly as much credit as it deserves.
    • deepnotderp 8y ago
      This ^^ 100x. If it wasn't for integrated circuits, the u.s. likely would not have won the race. And it's not just because I'm a chip guy.