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Comment by TheOtherHobbes | Hacker News Reader

When the Soviet Union was formed Russia was a pre-industrial feudal monarchy. It recapitulated roughly two hundred years of Western industrial development in less than fifty, mostly under the leadership of a murderous quasi-feudal dictator who purged all the brightest and most interesting people.

And it still survived WWII to become a competitive space-faring superpower.

I don’t particularly like Russia, but I think it’s wise not to underestimate what the country is capable of.

Also applies to China, even more so.

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All countries in the world was pre-industrial monarchies just 150 years ago. Please point to your point.

Moreover, in WWW2, USSR lost about 1/6 of population. It's hard to name such losses as "win". Western Allies, which is also at war with Germany, provided continuous aid to that "superpower" in addition to their own soldiers at war.

> All countries in the world was pre-industrial monarchies just 150 years ago.

Hardly.

I can't speak for your country as you haven't mentioned it but mine was certainly not pre-industrial in 1868.

Brunel was already dead by then (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isambard_Kingdom_Brunel) and Boulton and Watt were but a distant memory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watt).

>Western Allies, which is also at war with Germany, provided continuous aid to that "superpower" in addition to their own soldiers at war.

On D-day the nazis were on the run, pushed back to Poland. The USSR did more than 90% of the winning and much of it before anyone else invaded. This thinking that the UK, US, etc. did anything near the winning that the USSR did is getting old. Of course we helped but it was a tiny drop in a big sea. The biggest help was by far the supplies to USSR, not the soldiers.

Look at how people saw things back before the US spread its culture everywhere:

https://www.les-crises.fr/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/poll-fr...

It says a lot.

The war could not have been won without american material, period.

That said, the russians did most of the dying to win the war.

The Russians contributed blood, the americans, material, and the british, spirit - or so the old saying goes.

USSR entered Poland in 1939, long before Allies. Is it your point?

About polls: lies are quick to spread. In 1940, USSR was major enemy to France after Germany. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Pike .

But far not all them had at their possession resources of half of rest world.

Western Europe is all about that. How many colonial guldens are under each stone of town squares of its cities ...

No surprise that technical revolution was originated there.

Back to Russia...

At WW1 it had no chances to confront rest of Europe. Like it was "shell hunger" in Russian army in 1916 - it's "industry" simply could not produce enough.

But at WW2 time it did that - pretty much all Europe was working on Hitler's war machine.

Rise of potential was tremendous if to consider that it happened between 1917 and 1941.

Of course the only option of that burst was exploitation of its own people - Russia didn't get any (significant) investments from outside.

By the time of the WWII it was just as bad; pretty much all of strategic supplies, explosives, fuel, etc. were coming from USA and UK.

USSR supplied most of the manpower, but without the American military-industrial complex, Germans would have rolled all the way to the Pacific with no problem.

"pretty much all of strategic supplies"

That's simply not true.

58,000 of T34/T34-85 was produced during WW2 time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_combat_vehicle_producti...

That's just medium tanks - workhorse of the war. Total production of armored vehicles in USSR at WW2 > 100,000.

While it got 19,510 tanks in total on Lend-Lease: https://ww2-weapons.com/lend-lease-tanks-and-aircrafts/

Only 4,000 of them were Shermans - the only Lend-Lease tanks that were comparable at least somehow. All others were nicknamed "wheeled coffins".

The same ratio is for aircrafts.

As of fuel then only some high-octane ones - for some aircrafts.

When T-34's and Shermans met in Korea, it didn't go too well for T-34's. And some of the most decorated Soviet aces flew Airacobras.

But the most important part is that without American alloys, fuels, machine tools, let alone food and warm clothing (something USSR had a big problem supplying the populace with even during peacetime) there would be nothing to make T-34s with. That's what strategic supplies are.

Some of the important battles early in the war, i.e. stopping Germans from marching on Baku oil fields, were fought mostly with British tanks.

USSR lost about 2000 tanks at Dubno operation (1941) in one(!) battle, because of problems with engines, fuel, and lack of communication. Germans had no tanks at all at that time (according to USSR classification, Germans had light armored vehicles, with anti-riffle armor only). Tank is good only if it operational and under command.

>USSR supplied most of the manpower, but without the American military-industrial complex, Germans would have rolled all the way to the Pacific with no problem.

That's revisionist history -- and not the way things went down, or even how people that lived it knew them to be.

https://www.vox.com/2014/6/16/5814270/the-successful-70-year...

Or even how Hitler knew them to be:

https://www.feldgrau.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13647

Have you posted something about a novel historical research showing that neither lend-lease nor pre-lend-lease supplies of war materiel ever happened, it might have made for an interesting discussion. Vox, however, prints exactly what is to be expected from what Uncle Joe used to call fellow travelers in public, and useful idiot in private.

That reminds me of one time I was asked to help in translating some "documents" showing that it was US soldiers rather than Soviet that moved pretty much every German that still moved. A quick fact check showed that they lifted the passage from a neo-nazi site, which is where most attempts to defend the USSR usually end.

At beginning of WWW2, USSR had pretty good position: thousands of tanks, millions of tons of ammunition, million army, powerful ally (Germany). USSR attacked Finland at winter to prevent invasion of France & Britain via Norway and Finland to attack Leningrad. It was risky move, lot of soldiers of Red Army died because of cold, but USSR won. At beginning 1941, USSR waited for beginning of Britain bombing of Baku, to start invasion to East (to attack British military bases) with help of Germany, and then to conquer Britain islands. Everything was perfect until 22 June 1941.

A non-aggression pact is not an alliance, nor does it make an ally. Hitler fundamentally hated the communists, but was also desperate to prevent the USSR from joining the war. Stalin also fundamentally hated the Nazis.

> non-aggression pact is not an alliance

Jointly dividing Poland and having a military parade there is not an alliance?

Providing secret base for U-boats - just a pact, not an alliance?

Not even to mention the cooperation between German and Soviet secret police, massive flow of supplies from USSR to Germany etc. etc. prior to the German attack.

Yes, making random agreements is not an alliance.

Random agreements? Like "hey, let's do something... maybe invade a few random countries"?

Sure, if you want to designate any random aggreement as a full on best-friends-for-life alliance, you do you, buddy. But the facts remain, Germany and the USSR were delivered facto enemies who were looking to destroy each other the first chance they get.

So how it should void the fact of their pact?

Yes, they did sign a non-aggression pact. No, they were not allies.

If it quacks like duck, if it looks like duck, if it walks like duck - it duck.

Well first you'd need to establish that the subject in question quacks, and quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, walks, and walks like a duck. So far the only thing done here is take the definitions of things any country with geographic proximity and bare minimum willingness to negotiate would do, then redefine everything as alliance.

Which fits the duck allegory perfectly, since it refers to something that is not actually a duck.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/usvsth3m/you-know-phrase-if-looks-5...

>All countries in the world was pre-industrial monarchies just 150 years ago

You'd be very surprised.

>in addition to their own soldiers at war.

All 20 of them?

Catching up is kinda easy when you can just copy. USSR failed badly once it was time to go forward. Especially on electronics and computers.

We shouldn't underestimate what focused dictatorships are capable of. They're bloody effective.

> Catching up is kinda easy when you can just copy

That's easy to say now but no other country achieved that at that time. Especially not in a such a short time, it was an impressive feat.

Plenty of countries had to catch up with the UK.

And Russian empire was not that much backwards. Their economy was agriculture-based. But they had quite a few smart people. The only lacking thing was push from the government to industrialize.

Let alone they were far from catching up with the West by the time WW2 started or at any other point in their history.

It’s impressive in the same way that holocaust is impressive.

> And Russian empire was not that much backwards. Their economy was agriculture-based

That's quite an understatement, the Russian empire did not do any industrial revolution at all, it was a mostly undeveloped agricultural wasteland.

> Plenty of countries had to catch up with the UK.

But none of them succeeded to the extent of the Soviet Union at that time. One of the main argument of the communists at that time was actually to point out the failures of capitalism in Asia as why capitalism would never work. At that time the industrialisation receipe did not work for a lot of countries and plenty of people believed the industrialisation of the West could not be reproduced, and especially not with capitalism.

Everything is obvious in hindsight, it's how history work, you would create your own country now, it would not take that much time to industrialise it with modern techniques. The Soviets managed to take one of the least developed agricultural country of Europe (comparatively worse that current African countries) and transform it into a global superpower while other countries failed to even industrialise, this isn't a small feat at all.

> That's quite an understatement, the Russian empire did not do any industrial revolution at all, it was a mostly undeveloped agricultural wasteland.

They did have factories. In fact, factories in Petrograd were one of the hotbeds of revolutionary mind. Railroad in more densely populated areas. Electric power plants did exist here and there. St Petersburg or Moscow were rather similar to cities of similar size in the West. Countryside was just too sparsely populated to do anything with it.

> But none of them succeeded to the extent of the Soviet Union at that time

Succeeded by what measure? GDP? Satisfaction of citizens? Soviet Union had abnormally large amount of people working in agriculture all the way till the fall. Consumer industry never even came close to West. Sure, if you focus on military alone and put oppressive state apparatus behind it, with a lot of natural resources, you can have a damn sweet army. But the rest will crumble. And it did.

> transform it into a global superpower

Russia was already a super power. Purely by sheer size and manpower. They had some great minds in science in arts as well.

The 19th century super powers fell in first half of 20th century thanks to the raise of national identities and human rights. Making vast colonies too expensive to maintain in all sorts of ways. This gave birth to 2 superpowers that ruled the world in 2nd half of 20th century. USA avoided the fall because they were built on freedom and humanity (to certain extent, obviously) to begin with. USSR just avoided all of that thanks to totalitarian regime.

So, you're saying that being first in space wasn't moving forward?

> Especially on electronics and computers.

I strongly suspect that was due to lack of resources for research, rather than lack of ability, as by the time there was a serious focus on these areas, the economy wasn't doing so well.

Computer research was more because Soviet elite didn't believe in computing. Thus resources were allocated differently. Sicne there was no free market, nobody took a stab on their own either.

"Economy" didn't mean shit in USSR. It was all about priorities. War in Afghanistan got plenty of resources in meantime. As well as aiding friendly regimes around the globe. Meanwhile citizens were having a hard time in their daily lives and civilian industry was falling behind.

If we're going to cherry pick, we could say that tsarist Russia was highly modern country since Medelev figured out the elements table. Yet it's accepted it was an agricultural country, falling behind and fast. USSR, aside from several areas where they threw all their resources, was falling behind too.

So yes, sending first human to space is sad when you can't provide adequate life to your own citizens. It's like saying that North Korea is catching up thanks to their ICBM programme progress :)

P.S. Germans/Nazis were the ones who got both USSR and USA into space.

> Computer research was more because Soviet elite didn't believe in computing

True, what I meant was exactly this. There's always resources plenty for the things elites consider important, but if there was enough of them and then some, something would have trickled down to computing also.

> War in Afghanistan got plenty of resources in meantime. As well as aiding friendly regimes around the globe. Meanwhile citizens were having a hard time in their daily lives

Just like in every empire ever, including the U.S. at present, (still no universal healthcare there).

> So yes, sending first human to space is sad when you can't provide adequate life to your own citizens.

Agreed, but how is this different today?

> True, what I meant was exactly this. There's always resources plenty for the things elites consider important, but if there was enough of them and then some, something would have trickled down to computing also.

Or they'd have had more resources towards military or friendly regimes. Those 2 are kinda black holes for money

> Just like in every empire ever, including the U.S. at present, (still no universal healthcare there).

I don't think finances are stopping universal healthcare in US. It's purely ideological.

> > So yes, sending first human to space is sad when you can't provide adequate life to your own citizens. > Agreed, but how is this different today?

In Russia - it's same old. I wouldn't consider it a democracy or west or whatever either. In the west, people have radically better living standards and they seem to be going to much bigger compromises with their ideals for the sake of comfort. E.g. Nord Stream gas pipe.

> I don't think finances are stopping universal healthcare in US. It's purely ideological.

Ideology is used as a mask to protect corporate (private insurance) interests, which is why the top brass doesn't have interest in universal healthcare. It's a matter of interests and priorities, just like it was a matter of interests and priorities for the Soviets to ficus resources on things other than improving people's living standards.

> In the west, people have radically better living standards

Compared to Russia, yeah, but there's always the supposed lack of money for public services, which is often magically found for military purposes. It's the same mentality that the USSR had in that instead of funding public services, fund military endeavors.

Of course, I am not making a 1:1 equivalence in terms of freedom, but when it comes to allocating resources, today's world doesn't seem all that different.

First of all, I'm talking from European perspective. My exposure to US is limited to Americans I talk to.

I met lots of Americans who don't want universal healthcare purely for ideological reasons. Their arguments sometimes do make sense actually. Universal health care in Europe has it's fair share of problems and some aspects of US system are used to fix it.

And yes, average European and American (as much as that can be generalised) are quire different ideologically. For example, national ID and police having rights to ask for it is kinda a given in Europe. Nobody thinks that's wrong. Now try to tell that to Americans :) Or your attitude to various government-related things.

On top of that, even if it was purely corruption in US government, it'd be already different from USSR. Where it was ideologically motivated to put everything into military.

In USSR, citizens didn't have even theoretical power to have a say in allocating resources. Parties putting forward proposals and then trying to (not) follow through is infinitely different. Oh, and at least in Europe, they sometimes do follow through.

And the major difference is private sector existence. Soviets cared little if consumer goods are any good. A shirt is a shirt, if it has shitty fit or lame colors - it's a customer's problem. Meanwhile factory will keep making them for decades without any improvements. Scarcity of everyday goods? Meh, who needs toilet paper when we can build few more tanks. Meanwhile in capitalism system adjusts itself very quickly.

Actually, the problems you listed, just shows how government is always abusing whatever powers it got. Soviet system being extreme example of all-reaching government power. While different capitalist systems have more or less fixed that. Unfortunately 100% capitalist system is not viable either, since it needs checks to keep companies from abusing it.

Would you mind answering why it took the US more than 20 years to catch somewhat up with Russian rocket engines even though they had access to information on how it was made if it is so easy? The best Russian rockets from the Soviet era wasn't beat by the US before SpaceX did so.

It's kinda cool that US managed to put man on the moon first, even with much worse rockets, eh? Also, US had reusable spaceships in 80s. While USSR struggled with a similar programme and didn't finish it before the collapse.

The US still hasn't caught up. SpaceX's Merlin engine is more advanced and less advanced than the best Russian engines: less efficient, but extremely simple (in sophisticated ways like face shut-off), and much cheaper, despite being built in LA.

Raptor and the BE-4 will probably close the gap.

Soviet Moon program ended in a big nothing because by the time it was started all the German designers (who made all those great engines) had went home, and without them USSR never managed to catch up to anything like F-1. Native designs tended to blow up.

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