[nickpp]

I can attest that in the Eastern Block (not USSR) where I lived, this was indeed true.

Things could've been different in the USSR which was the conquering country while the Eastern Block their vassals. Many goods produced went straight to the benefit of Russian occupiers while lacking in the Eastern European countries.

[ivan_gammel]

So you can attest something different than life of middle class of SU. How is this relevant? I lived in middle class family in SU and I see it differently.

[meerita]

Just look at the evidence: scientists fleed USSR as soon as they had the chance and not the reverse, scientists invading USSR begging to be in the science paradise the propapaganda sells. If you go to Cuba to learn medicine, you will realise everything is so outdated that cannot be treated seriously. Same happened in USSR, but the propaganda aparatus still works trying to sell the idea of the science paradise, all I've seen traveling to ex USSR, and some communist-socialist places is quite the opposite.

[ivan_gammel]

This is certainly not true. I do not know where you get it from, but real brain drain started after transition to a presumably better capitalist democratic system and it happened due to economic reasons. The funding simply went down by orders of magnitude, which made scientific work impossible.

Your personal tourist impressions are not making you closer to understanding of such a big country with such complicated history. Try reading some books if you are really interested.

[meerita]

I have read books, of course. But brain drainage for sure were prior the dissolution. You can read for example about the Operation Osoaviakhim, where 2500 scientists (and their families) were forced to go the soviet union as war reparations. Or the book The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov: The Story of the Persecution of One of the Great Scientists, were you can read how beautiful was science in the soviet union.

[ityngyn]

The real brain drain started when people were finally allowed to flee the paradise and what was left of it. It wasn't their fault your apparatchiks and yesterday's party members, the real owners of everything, started to carve up their posessions calling themselves capitalists this time. Before the fall only establishment members could flee (illegally) and jews (since the 1970s).