7 ms·

Fascinating stuff. You’ve got to hand it to the russians. At that time, they sure knew how to build.

by alex_suzuki 4y ago

wiseowise 4y ago
> Russians Are you sure about that?
- christophilus 4y ago
  > Are you sure about that? No. But I'm curious what you're suggesting. The article mentions that the last 2 were built by the Fins. The rest appear to have been Russian-made. Are you suggesting the Russians didn't build any? Or... well... I'm not sure what you're getting at.
  - mangosteenjuice 4y ago
    The Soviet Union wasn't just Russians. Their shipbuilding industry and space programs were heavily Ukranian.
  - akho 4y ago
    They are probably suggesting that Ukrainians did it, that’s currently in vogue.
  - rat87 4y ago
    The Soviet Union was made up of many countries and many ethnicities. Yet a lot of impressive stuff including winning WW2 is attributed to Russia and Russians. Ukraine is often brought up these days for obvious reasons but there were many countries and even more ethnicities who get overlooked Ukraine was the second most populous (accounting for 18 percent of the population whole Russia accounted for 51 percent) and contained a lot of the manufacturing plants. It looks like these particular ships were built in Russia (although I don't know where engineers grew up or what their ethnicity was or if they might have hesitated to identify with Russia) but for instance the head of the Soviet space program Korolev was Ukranian (sort of he was born in Ukraine with Ukranian, Russian, Belarusian, etc ancestry and I've seen claims that he claimed both Russian and Ukranian ethnicity/nationality at different times) also take the flagship Moskva that Ukraine sank that was built in Ukraine as well as the recently memed Soviet Treasure Island (which was made by a studio in Kyiv). Often the west identifies something made in the Soviet Union as Russian even if it's not or if it's more complex to assign it to a modern country. Also part of the way that people think about identity of people like Korolev is based on Russia's and Putin's attempt to rehabilitate the atrocities and weaponize nostalgia about the few good bits. Korolev was sent to the Gulag due to fake accusations, some say he died due to physical injuries from that time preventing quick medical treatment.
FridayoLeary 4y ago
I think there was excellent higher education in the soviet union. You have many people with phds, engineers etc. They also promoted intellectual pursuits such as chess. The issue was/is the Communist system and now the unbelievable amount of corruption/organised crime at every level of government. The intellectual class in russia were robbed after the fall of the soviet union. They are scientists, mathematicians, engineers, they are extremely capable, but they have never been given a chance.
- roywiggins 4y ago
  Not just corruption, at least during Stalin's rule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Vavilov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Vavilov > Vavilov's work was criticized by Trofim Lysenko, whose anti-Mendelian concepts of plant biology had won favor with Joseph Stalin. As a result, Vavilov was arrested and subsequently sentenced to death in July 1941. Although his sentence was commuted to twenty years' imprisonment, he died in prison in 1943. According to Lyubov Brezhneva, he was thrown to his death into a pit of lime in the prison yard.
- adolph 4y ago
  Asianometry also has a video "Why the Soviet Computer Failed" [0]. If the Soviet Union had excellent higher education, why was/is Communism and then corruption/organized crime an issue? At what point do phds, engineers, etc take responsibility for the society in which they live? When do the smart people say "we have met the enemy and he is us?" [1] 0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnHdqPBrtH8 1. https://library.osu.edu/site/40stories/2020/01/05/we-have-met-the-enemy/ From the video description: In 1986, the Soviet Union had slightly more than 10,000 computers. The Americans had 1.3 million. At the time of Stalin's death, the Soviet Union was the world's third most proficient computing power. But by the 1960s, the US-Soviet computing gap was already years long. Twenty years later, the gap was undeniable and basically permanent. Why did this happen? The Soviet state believed in science and industrial modernization. Support for research & development and the hard sciences were plentiful. They had the country’s finest minds. Goodness gracious, they launched Sputnik! They landed on Venus! How did it come to this?
ch4s3 4y ago
Once they were done shooting all of the engineers for "wrecking" and got around to training a new generation and got all of the western blueprints back from the NKVD they really got to work! [*edit] If you're downvoting I suggest you read about the waves of purges of engineers[1][2][3] that continued well after the Stalinist purges. Moreover in this context we're talking about a ship powered with a nuclear reactor, and it's well known that Soviet reactor designs were stolen from the West[4] in the early days. Also it's a joke, lighten up. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrecking_(Soviet_Union) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrecking_(Soviet_Union) [2] https://www.egr.msu.edu/~amezqui3/personal/extracts/the_gulag_archipelago.pdf https://www.egr.msu.edu/~amezqui3/personal/extracts/the_gula... [3] https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/en/document/nkvd-mass-secret-national-operations-august-1937-november-1938.html https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resista... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_spies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_spies
- vkou 4y ago
  I think most of the downvotes aren't because of your claims about the purges, but because of your wink-nudge implication that Soviet engineers and mathematicians could not achieve anything of note without espionage.
  - ch4s3 4y ago
    Well to be clear what I'm saying is that they literally murdered a whole generation of engineers, scientists, and technicians. What are you supposed to do from that starting point? Had they not captured train loads of Nazi scientists and literally stollen every significant piece of technology developed in the west for 20+ years it would have taken them FAR FAR longer to develop a lot of this stuff independently. They essentially cut themselves off from the global community and purged all of their talent. They had to bootstrap science and engineering somehow. No doubt, absent the stalinist purges and closing off of the USSR, then Soviet scientists could have equally participated in the science and engineering going on in the rest of the world.
    - 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

Fascinating stuff. You’ve got to hand it to the russians. At that time, they sure knew how to build.

wiseowise 4y ago

> Russians Are you sure about that?

christophilus 4y ago
> Are you sure about that? No. But I'm curious what you're suggesting. The article mentions that the last 2 were built by the Fins. The rest appear to have been Russian-made. Are you suggesting the Russians didn't build any? Or... well... I'm not sure what you're getting at.
- mangosteenjuice 4y ago
  The Soviet Union wasn't just Russians. Their shipbuilding industry and space programs were heavily Ukranian.
- akho 4y ago
  They are probably suggesting that Ukrainians did it, that’s currently in vogue.
- rat87 4y ago
  The Soviet Union was made up of many countries and many ethnicities. Yet a lot of impressive stuff including winning WW2 is attributed to Russia and Russians. Ukraine is often brought up these days for obvious reasons but there were many countries and even more ethnicities who get overlooked Ukraine was the second most populous (accounting for 18 percent of the population whole Russia accounted for 51 percent) and contained a lot of the manufacturing plants. It looks like these particular ships were built in Russia (although I don't know where engineers grew up or what their ethnicity was or if they might have hesitated to identify with Russia) but for instance the head of the Soviet space program Korolev was Ukranian (sort of he was born in Ukraine with Ukranian, Russian, Belarusian, etc ancestry and I've seen claims that he claimed both Russian and Ukranian ethnicity/nationality at different times) also take the flagship Moskva that Ukraine sank that was built in Ukraine as well as the recently memed Soviet Treasure Island (which was made by a studio in Kyiv). Often the west identifies something made in the Soviet Union as Russian even if it's not or if it's more complex to assign it to a modern country. Also part of the way that people think about identity of people like Korolev is based on Russia's and Putin's attempt to rehabilitate the atrocities and weaponize nostalgia about the few good bits. Korolev was sent to the Gulag due to fake accusations, some say he died due to physical injuries from that time preventing quick medical treatment.

FridayoLeary 4y ago

I think there was excellent higher education in the soviet union. You have many people with phds, engineers etc. They also promoted intellectual pursuits such as chess. The issue was/is the Communist system and now the unbelievable amount of corruption/organised crime at every level of government. The intellectual class in russia were robbed after the fall of the soviet union. They are scientists, mathematicians, engineers, they are extremely capable, but they have never been given a chance.

roywiggins 4y ago
Not just corruption, at least during Stalin's rule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Vavilov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Vavilov > Vavilov's work was criticized by Trofim Lysenko, whose anti-Mendelian concepts of plant biology had won favor with Joseph Stalin. As a result, Vavilov was arrested and subsequently sentenced to death in July 1941. Although his sentence was commuted to twenty years' imprisonment, he died in prison in 1943. According to Lyubov Brezhneva, he was thrown to his death into a pit of lime in the prison yard.
adolph 4y ago
Asianometry also has a video "Why the Soviet Computer Failed" [0]. If the Soviet Union had excellent higher education, why was/is Communism and then corruption/organized crime an issue? At what point do phds, engineers, etc take responsibility for the society in which they live? When do the smart people say "we have met the enemy and he is us?" [1] 0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnHdqPBrtH8 1. https://library.osu.edu/site/40stories/2020/01/05/we-have-met-the-enemy/ From the video description: In 1986, the Soviet Union had slightly more than 10,000 computers. The Americans had 1.3 million. At the time of Stalin's death, the Soviet Union was the world's third most proficient computing power. But by the 1960s, the US-Soviet computing gap was already years long. Twenty years later, the gap was undeniable and basically permanent. Why did this happen? The Soviet state believed in science and industrial modernization. Support for research & development and the hard sciences were plentiful. They had the country’s finest minds. Goodness gracious, they launched Sputnik! They landed on Venus! How did it come to this?

ch4s3 4y ago

Once they were done shooting all of the engineers for "wrecking" and got around to training a new generation and got all of the western blueprints back from the NKVD they really got to work! [*edit] If you're downvoting I suggest you read about the waves of purges of engineers[1][2][3] that continued well after the Stalinist purges. Moreover in this context we're talking about a ship powered with a nuclear reactor, and it's well known that Soviet reactor designs were stolen from the West[4] in the early days. Also it's a joke, lighten up. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrecking_(Soviet_Union) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrecking_(Soviet_Union) [2] https://www.egr.msu.edu/~amezqui3/personal/extracts/the_gulag_archipelago.pdf https://www.egr.msu.edu/~amezqui3/personal/extracts/the_gula... [3] https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/en/document/nkvd-mass-secret-national-operations-august-1937-november-1938.html https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resista... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_spies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_spies

vkou 4y ago
I think most of the downvotes aren't because of your claims about the purges, but because of your wink-nudge implication that Soviet engineers and mathematicians could not achieve anything of note without espionage.
- ch4s3 4y ago
  Well to be clear what I'm saying is that they literally murdered a whole generation of engineers, scientists, and technicians. What are you supposed to do from that starting point? Had they not captured train loads of Nazi scientists and literally stollen every significant piece of technology developed in the west for 20+ years it would have taken them FAR FAR longer to develop a lot of this stuff independently. They essentially cut themselves off from the global community and purged all of their talent. They had to bootstrap science and engineering somehow. No doubt, absent the stalinist purges and closing off of the USSR, then Soviet scientists could have equally participated in the science and engineering going on in the rest of the world.
  - 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]