The book is a memoir of Boris Chertok, one of the leading soviet rocket and spacecraft designers, and was written in 90s. (can't recommend it highly enough, by

The book is a memoir of Boris Chertok, one of the leading soviet rocket and spacecraft designers, and was written in 90s. (can't recommend it highly enough, by the way) The rest is my own conclusion. It's actually quite hard to pinpoint a single cause for all russian space industry troubles, most of it goes far beyond a single industry boundary and boils down to the politics, lobbying games and lack of governmental interest in certain industries which are still 99% dependent on the government.