Soviet achievements and innovations were mostly based on espionage, copies/rip offs and forced labor as their initial space program turned out to be. The reason for this is that the atmosphere did not encourage creativity as commies tended to mediocre everyone and the system's bureaucratic rigidity et cetera. After such a waste of
talent and brain drain, no
one has to wonder about the backwardness of its today's successor, in practice it is still a developing
country when taking into account its poor infrastructure, corruption, "justice system" and the share of exports of raw materials in
GDP etc. and this current authoritarian regime does not improve the situation to say the least.
About the before mentioned space program; there were
ca. 2,000 German rocketeers (engineers, scientists and mathematicians) as a forced labor on the Soviet space program from the end of the
war till the late 1950s. Russkies recall eagerly about on the contribution of Wernher von Braun and partners to the US' space program, but for some reason they have a common amnesia in their very own
case.
Let's forget rockets and the Sputnik in 1957 because much more significant achievement happened in 1969, the first toilet
paper factory! The machines had been imported from the UK, albeit it took years to meet the need of the whole
country - in fact, it appears to be still a
chronic deficiency in public restrooms if someone daredevil has the courage to visit
one.
- "Sputnik in 1957 was
nothing compared to the one of the greatest Soviet achievements in 1969."
- "What was this achievement?"
- "The first toilet
paper factory in the Soviet Union began production."
- "
Oh, how about before that, did they all wipe their ass with a Pravda (Truth) newspaper or with an owl like tree huggers?"
- "Not all, some Tovarištš Comrades had imported toilet
paper available, you know, all assholes were equal, but some assholes were more equal than others." (slightly modified George Orwell quote from his 'Animal Farm')
