[timonoko]

There never was any real high tech industry. Everything good was done in gulags which my Russian schoolbook called "Nauki Gorods" ie science towns. Everything else was substandard garbage.

However under harsh military rule labor camps work well to produce high tech. German V2-rockets and Curta calculators prove that. But there is time limit for that. You will run out of people.

[badpun]

What about sending Gagarin to space in the 1950s? Was that tech developed in the Gulags as well?

[timonoko]

Very much so. But there was hierarchy. Top scientist had all the freedoms.

You can clearly see in the Netflix-movie that cosmonauts were living in a creepy military camp, while american astronauts drove home to their family after hard day of space flying.

[iavael]

Well... first cosmonaut candidates (and many after that) were military pilots. So no wonder that they lived in military camp.

Also about appointing first cosmonaut by looks is not something strange. After all strict selections there's almost no difference among final candidates in health condition, skills or cognitive abilities. They are all as healthy as human can be and quite smart and trained. So final pick by these criterias would be pretty random anyway (even now for modern candidates it still is). And given that sending first human in space was a big deal about political prestige it's no wonder that it was made by the looks of candidates.

[omega3]

What Netflix movie?

[timonoko]

Gagarin: First in Space (2013)

Plot: Khrushchev selected Gagarin because good teeth and nice smile.

[kilotaras]

Korolev, who was one of the leading rocket engineers during the time didn't have teeth as he lost them in Kolyma labour camp.

[yakireev]

TIL that Yandex campus where I used to work for so many years was a gulag. Okay.

[nevermindiguess]

To our American friends, if the campus doesn’t have McDonald’s and a rainbow flag, it’s a Gulag. That’s the level.

[yakireev]

Ironically enough, floors of the seven-story building were painted in the colours of rainbow, and there was a Starbucks downstairs.

[russian-troll]

What you stated is false. Labor camps ("sharashki") and science towns are two different things from different "soviet epochs".

However it's true that soviets failed "consumer IT".

[scotty79]

> However under harsh military rule labor camps work well to produce high tech. German V2-rockets and Curta calculators prove that.

Wasn't also Manhattan Project an example of this?

[timonoko]

Yes indeed. But "Science Towns" are really short term solution.

[scotty79]

For secret projects sure ... but something like Silicon Valley makes a lot of sense.

[ymolodtsov]

Russia is one of a few European countries which had a self-sufficient tech industry that Google, Facebook, Uber and others weren't able to take over.