Hacker News Reader

Comment by dvdhnt | Hacker News Reader

I disagree.

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

View on HN

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”.

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.

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.

> The original point being disputed was that SU and Soviet people "never achieved much"

But they didn't achieve much in reality. That's why they have to copy most of their technologies from other countries during all their 70 years.

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.

It's easy to make exclusive lists to try and make one country or another look better.

And who is the rest of the world? The USSR achieved a lot in comparison to Africa, South America, the Middle East, and SE Asia.

If you consider the gulag an achievement, sure!

I would definitely NOT say that the USSR achieved more than Latin America. People in much of LatAm are happy and reasonably free -- very free by comparison to the USSR. But I guess you wouldn't consider freedom an achievement -- too easy, perhaps? or maybe not to your liking?

Argentina was throwing dissidents out of planes into the Atlantic ocean in the 1980's. Chile had Pinochet. Colombia only just recently signed a peace treaty with FARC, drawing down a 50 year conflict that has killed >200,000 people. Guatemala had an almost 40 year civil war. El Salvador had a 12 year civil war. I could go on...

One thing that a lot of these conflicts and situations had in common is that the USA covertly overthrew a democratically elected, socialist leaning government using the CIA. Thousands of people were killed due to the meddling of the USA and the CIA.

Yes, Latin America had dark times, but before, and after, it's been rather OK -- certainly fantastic by comparison to the USSR. There are no gulags in Chile or Argentina, or Brazil, or... And Chile is doing very well -- they're the tiger of LatAm. Colombia has finally beaten back the guerillas and is doing rather well considering. And Venezuela? Yeah, not well, not Venezuela -- wonder why /s

But instead they chose no only to play that game, but to then start quite a few expensive proxy wars... Korea, Vietnam

Actually the Korean War was started upon strong insistence of Kim, Il Sung of North Korea. Sure Soviets gave the approval, but only reluctantly.

> 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.

> 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

Yes it did : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_Wars

Not innovative it was...

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?

3 scientists from country with population ~200 million and during 70 years period?

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?

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.

I won't bankrupt if I get sick or get in accident, even if I get sick while unemployed.

I don't have college debt. And also those who were not able to finish college are not crippled by debt till end of their lives.

Aaaand your wage statistic does not count in surplus of prisoners US have.

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?"

They're a lot easier to move, if you own the goalposts.

"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.

1. https://www.google.com/search?ei=ENJnWq_SO8zvzgKh8JOQAg&q=de...

2. https://www.google.com/search?ei=ENJnWq_SO8zvzgKh8JOQAg&q=de...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com