Some of the Soviet scientists who won a Nobel Prize in science [1]:
- 1958 Pavel Cherenkov, Ilya Frank and Igor Tamm "for the discovery and interpretation of the Cherenkov effect"
- 1962 Lev Landau "for his theories about condensed matter, particularly about liquid helium superfluidity"
- 1964 Nikolay Basov and Aleksandr Prokhorov "for fundamental work in the area of the quantum electronics, which led to the construction of oscillators and amplifiers on the basis of the maser laser principle"
Additionally, some of the other areas where Soviets contributed to research and innovation include [2]:
But the USSR failed anyways, and it failed to innovate enough before it failed to overcome the downsides of communism. That's the point.
You can have lots of people with post-grad credentials whose creativity is not fully utilized. Or who don't really have the requisite creativity in spite of their credentials. The USSR may have had quality and quantity in spades (maybe it really did!) but their economic structure wasted that advantage.
> But the USSR failed anyways, and it failed to innovate enough before it failed to overcome the downsides of communism.
You mean “the downside of starting off as a poorly-developed state engaged in a multi-generation combination of outright war and proxy wars and military spending races with the most advanced countries in the world”.
No. A number of successful countries started off "as a poorly-developed state engaged in outright war and proxy wars". The U.S. itself, for example. And Israel, for another. Stop making excuses.
And, as if the arms race of the Cold War did not involve choices made by the Soviets! Come off it. They could easily have chosen not to get dragged into an arms race. But instead they chose no only to play that game, but to then start quite a few expensive proxy wars... Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, a number of civil wars in Africa, Nicaragua, ... These were their choices.
So? The original point being disputed was that SU and Soviet people "never achieved much" which is not true in many areas, one of which is becoming a militarily powerful country able to engage in a stand off with USA while 100 years ago Poland beat Soviet Russia in a war a year after gaining its own independence.
Saying that "they are stupid because they were still communists" or that other countries were successful is moving the goal post.
Israel was a very special situation due to UN, Holocaust, ties to the West, etc. and USA is on outright easy mode in comparison because of their remote placement, size and abundance of everything and it has had tons of quiet time to develop and attracted the brightest people from the world for a while to come to live and work there. I'd say Japan or Prussia or Singapore were better sudden (under 100 years) success stories.
They did not achieve much in comparison to the rest of the world. Come on, it's obvious:
- a non-hungry society? NO
- wealthy society? certainly not
- advanced and commercially successful airliners? no (but you'll pick a nit here, I'm sure)
- advanced medicine? no (cue BS about how wonderful medicine is in Cuba, but still no)
- advanced computing devices? no, certainly nothing like those available in the West by 1991, much less anything since
- the Internet? NO
- putting a man on the moon? (hardly important, but) no
- a myriad of consumer products of varying technological content, from the trivial to the highly advanced? NO, see the first item
- how about... cars... anti-lock brakes, catalytic converters, airbags...? no
I could go on. But really, no, the USSR did not come close to the U.S. as to innovation, not because the USSR lacked talented people (it had them in spades) or a decent tech education system (it had a very good tech education system), but because its economic system could not make the best of those resources. It's that simple.
> A number of successful countries started off "as a poorly-developed state engaged in outright war and proxy wars". The U.S. itself, for example
The US did not go through a long period of active direct and proxy conflict with the most advanced contemporary nations at it's founding. It fought a brief war to separate (which it was losing until a major power opposed to Britain intervened), and then not much with any major power till it decided to take advantage of the Napoleonic Wars and the pretext of impressment to seize British Canada (unsuccessfully). The US was a sideshow isolated by oceans for the major powers for almost as long after it's formation as the USSR existed.
That is certainly one way of rephrasing, but the fact remains that of those things you list, many are the result of the ideological focus on spreading communism. So, in a way, the parent post is right that they failed to get past the downsides of communism.
American measures of creativity are narrow minded, short sighted, taken from singular point of view.
The first two domestic microwave ovens in the Ussr were: first one, built without a magnetron, with "surplus" solid state RF emitters because all magnetrons were spent on military radars; second one, made with multi-kilowatt, water cooled klystron and weighted 60 kg, because the designer thought "with klystron, we can modulate the power with a cheap rheostat" without having to use "complex, tricky, always breaking mechanical timers."
"USA does not have talent to build kitchen appliances out of super duper expensive mil-spec components?" - will ask some. No, but US simply never had conditions that would've required creative solutions to problems like "how to make consumer goods when the whole country has been turned into a munitions factory?"
What I can jab commenters above with is that behind each "particularly creative" article an American big co. releases, there are thousands of anonymous engineers, designers, software developers and many other highly skilled people working in outsourcing sweatshops in Asia.
For each "creativish" GUI app, there are thousands of research hours of anonymous geniuses that went into fundamental research in computer science and electronics engineering that made it possible that you can carry computing power of a supercomputer from few generations ago in your pocket.
Now, how many artsy, creativish, anorexic tech CEOs there are in US who are, say, epitaxy metrology specialists who know how to grow 3D transistors with 10 times fewer mask scans than a competitor?
Yep, they produced a lot of research. So, how did they apply these technologies to create products the market actually want? And abundance for all people to lead better lives?
This is an odd redefinition of innovation. Is Snapchat more innovative than a proof of the Riemann hypothesis? Number of people who Snapchat: apparently at least 178 million. Number of people who want a proof of the Riemann hypothesis? Maybe a million? Out of which probably ten thousand will actually read it?
Yes, the Soviet Union had many problems, but
>how did they apply these technologies to create products the market actually want
is essentially just asking "why were they communist and not capitalist?"
"Creating [new/different] products the market actually wants" is a pretty reasonable definition of innovation.
The Riemann hypothesis? That's research, not innovation. It's still valuable, but it's not innovation. (Is it as valuable as innovation? Arguably yes, but it's still not innovation.)
> "Creating [new/different] products the market actually wants" is a pretty reasonable definition of innovation.
No, it's at best cherry picking and at worst terrible redefinition of innovation. Innovation is defined as "the action or process of innovating" [1] and innovating is defined as "make changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas, or products" [2].
So, while creating new products is innovating, innovating is not necessarily creating new products. In fact, I'd argue that without new methods and ideas, you wouldn't be able to create new products. So, a new hypothesis, by definition, is absolutely innovation.
The original point was that SU never achieved much in any area (which is clearly not true). A point could today be made that lots of research in the USA with its growing inequality is also not being used to create 'an abundance for all people to lead better lives'.
The median full-time wage in the US is 70% higher than the EU median full-time wage.
The high US inequality is a result of the spectacularly extreme outcomes that come from simultaneously having a very large integrated economy & population base, extremely high economic output, and extreme national wealth.
If you integrated large parts Europe, you'd see a similar extreme inequality between eg the top end of Norway or Sweden, and the bottom of Bulgaria or Moldova. Or othewise the top end of wealth outcomes, such as Amancio Ortega or Bernard Arnault, versus the bottom end of wealth outcomes in Croatia. Except the US bottom is dramatically above the bottom of Europe.
Given the way the ranking under discussion values tertiary education and given how much the Soviets had them but didn't succeed economically, is having a high number of them really beneficial? It takes resources and time to get a PhD or a masters. Are these the best thing on which to spend them? Do they really matter? Can you be more practically innovative with simple undergrad degrees?
Rides into space and rocket engines are not the only thing USA needs Russian Federation for [0] and [1]. (The second reference has a misleading url; the artcile's actual title is "Why the U.S. Is Buying Natural Gas From Russia").
The US has superior launch capability to Russia. SpaceX performed more launches all by itself in 2017 than all of the large Russian nation that has been doing space launches for 60 years. That gap is about to get dramatically worse over the next five years.
The first nuclear power plant connected to the grid to actually power stuff was one in the SU. The first artificial satellite, first animal in orbit and first human in space are all from SU. The first properly continuously inhabited space station Mir was also theirs. Then they (Russian which is de facto descendant of and was most important part of SU before it dissolved) also contributed to the ISS along the US. They also made the Tsar Bomba, FOBS, AK, Katyusha, RPG, Su, MiG, T tanks, etc. and had other weapon, space and medicine related achievements.
In the interwar period in 1919-1921 war SU was also badly beat up by 'weaker' Poland (that only gained independence in 1918 after 123 years since it was partitioned completely in the last of 3 partitions) and it and its satellite states in Warsaw Pact/Eastern Bloc grew to be strong enough to engage in a stand off with USA and the West.
And yet they didn't produce that much stuff that people actually wanted. If you went to a grocery store in Moscow in the 80s the shelves were empty unless you knew when the store would buy the allotted inventory.
Not saying the USSR didn't produce a lot of good research and science but they weren't the best at transferring that research into technology the people really wanted. Because of the free market the US and Europe could try all different kinds of hardware and software ideas that lead to the ecosystem we have today, for example. Same thing with finance.
> Not saying the USSR didn't produce a lot of good research and science but they weren't the best at transferring that research into technology the people really wanted
They did not cared, in the first place through. They were not capitalist. They actual failure is that they did not achieved world domination and that they did not managed to build that new superior human they wanted. Those were the ideological goals.
They also did monernized Russia after they came to power, monarchy they replaced was very behind the technology of the time.
Ironically though, many rockets built by companies specializing in the US defense are dependent on Russian rocket engines to send their vehicles into space.
Yes, those engines (and ISS parts) were specifically ordered by US to keep Soviet rocket production busy and to avoid their migration to North Korea or Iran.
Russia did a lot of innovation in the 1950’s - 1970’s. They then made two terrible decisions. One was to stop producing their own computer parts and steal from abroad, which worked at first but then it became harder to steal and reverse engineer than simply make themselves. The BESM-6 mainframe was an incredible computer, sad they didn’t continue working on it. Second was the move against the Jews in the 1970’s. Kind of ironic they didn’t learn the lesson of Hitler, lots of great future scientists left. Anyway this is why the Google founder Sergei Brin is now in the US. His father was Jewish and wanted to be a mathematician, but since he was a Jew he could only be a janitor.
>it became harder to steal and reverse engineer than simply make themselves.
That
The very same thing is with China these days I say from my first hand experience.
Here is one example from great many:
I once worked with Rapoo, a PC peripherals and cellphone accessories manufacturer. They had a guy who was a brilliant industrial designer. He authored ALL of Rapoo's Red Dot award winning products (and they have many.) The only problem with him was (or how it looked to company's managers) that he had no degree, and he was a vocational school grad. He first came to the company as an unpaid intern, and he then designed their first award winning product while still receiving no salary. That product was his first design work at the company. He singlehandedly made them known and distinguished from the sea of noname OEMs all making products that looks like half-used soap bars.
It took his extreme efforts just to get his design being chosen over a yet another boring one bought from product design sweatshop.
When it became news that it was his design that won the company fame, the reaction from managers was not encouragement, but disdain! It was only enough to get him hired full time on a measly salary. He continued to work and win awards for them.
After years without any recognition, he thought it was enough when it came to yet another design review where he had to defend his vision in front of bimboish mid-managers. Contending with his design was one from a recently hired mediocre Italian designer (hired for an astonishing salary of 50k CNY per month, while his was just 12k.) After hours of intense debates with the "jury," they were both told to "just to do it like that Apple style" for the reason "Apple style is expensive." That was the last drop for him.
The guy now lives a comfy life and enjoys a dream job in one idyllic Alpine country.
What I wanted to say here: just like Soviets killed their own computer industry out of their own sense of insecurity and fiery inferiority complex, Chinese industry alienates its best genuine talents by not being able to admit over insecurities of the affluent class that Chinese tech specialists can produce superior original works themselves.
If only even 1% of Chinese corporate functionaries had little bit more of believe in themselves, along with self-esteem and self-confidence. If they thought in a way where they don't think "there is no chance that we can do this better than foreigners" before even trying, Chinese industry would've been like nothing it is today.
While I can’t say if the percentage is correct it’s not that far off.
Both my parents were on their 2nd PhD in Russia in during that time (born 1942) both are Jewish the level of plagiarism in the academia was insane they had to enroll under non Jewish names to be even accepted were accused of plagiarism multiple times while some of their dissertations were not only plagiarized but effectively stolen.
It took my father probably an extra decade to get trough every thing PhD in biology and an MD simply because of the corruption in the academia where party favorites got preferential treatments and outcasts would have their exams lost recieve false penalties and if you happen to be Jewish often given tests which were designed to be impossible to pass.
Do you find the title serious? And how about the illustration? Did you ask yourself if this could possibly be a russian bashing wapo article by any chance?
It’s from 2014, before the Jeff Bezos acquisition and the current Russian collision investigation.
Regarding the Russian investigation, I agree with Glenn Greenewald that there is nothing there, and that the Democrats are in danger of becoming the HUAC of the 2020’s.
Also, in defense of Trump, I think he understands that the real danger is China, who fakes both the degrees AND the research. See this article:
Some of the Soviet scientists who won a Nobel Prize in science [1]:
- 1958 Pavel Cherenkov, Ilya Frank and Igor Tamm "for the discovery and interpretation of the Cherenkov effect"
- 1962 Lev Landau "for his theories about condensed matter, particularly about liquid helium superfluidity"
- 1964 Nikolay Basov and Aleksandr Prokhorov "for fundamental work in the area of the quantum electronics, which led to the construction of oscillators and amplifiers on the basis of the maser laser principle"
Additionally, some of the other areas where Soviets contributed to research and innovation include [2]:
- stem cells
- light emitting diodes
- electric rocket motor
- blood bank
- paratrooping
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_technology_in_the_...
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Russian_innovation...
edit: formatting