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Comment by fsloth | Hacker News Reader

That is quite harsh. While no credible consumer goods requiring complex manufacture or design come from the former USSR area (except of Baltics which retained pre-soviet spirit) to this day, the industrial complex managed to create quit a lot of ... industrial stuff that they managed to sell around the world.

Some well known examples:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAZ

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_(rocket_family)

And of course the list would not be complete without:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalashnikov_rifle

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And https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lada_Niva

Most of the stuff in your list was basically produced manually in very small quantities. UAZ/AK would be an exception, but they were unusable without careful selection or manually manufactured replacement parts.

While inefficient, the system did create complex things that worked more or less as advertized - which is quite far from the the claim that the system could not make anything real or worthwhile. It's just not a very good system.

There was a joke in Soviet Union:

Americans stole plans for super secret soviet stealth fighter. Every time Lockheed-Martin engineers try to replicate the design according to documentation they end up building steam engine. So Americans kidnap one of the Soviet engineers to help them to decipher the design. Once he sees the documents he points at the small remark at the very end: to get the desired device after building a steam engine shape it manually with a file.

This joke is a pretty accurate description of the state of precision manufacturing capabilities of USSR. Manually created single prototype is not a "complex thing that worked".

The Kalashnikov rifle family is undoubtedly the most common weapon platform in the world (even if only having a slight edge in numbers over the AR platform). They made a lot of them. And they were quite effective. I'm no USSR shill, but credit must be given where due.

Kalashnikovs were great. Many Russian things were great -- mathematicians, physicists, composers, attack helicopters, etc.

> mathematicians

Mostly jews

> physicists

Mostly jews

Is it a good thing or a bad thing for you? Would you consider americans of jewish descent not contributing to that of USA?

It's not bad or good. Just a fact.

Kalashnikov's autobiography is worth a read if you're into small arms. Most interesting to me was his description of how competitors for a large acquisition were tested.

Thanks for the reference!

> Kalashnikov rifle family

was a copy of a German design, not independent invention.

> They made a lot of them

Most was just garbage. You'll have to know a year and a serial number range to have higher probability of picking an actually usable weapon.

If you mean StG 44, then no, AK is not in any sense a copy of that, or any other design. It is a popular myth, but it's completely wrong, and rather evident to anyone who has ever seen both rifles disassembled.

Kalashnikov did draw inspiration from other designs, of course, same as any other gun designer. M1 Garand was arguably the design that influenced it most - most notably, the trigger, but also the principle of long-stroke piston action. This is further supported by Kalashnikov mentioning Garand as one of his favorite designs several times. But even then, AK is very much a distinct design.

Here's a detailed analysis: https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2015/05/05/rifle-paterni...

And I have no idea where you got the "most was just garbage" claim from. It's certainly not true, and I haven't heard it before.

SU produced a lot of airplanes, both military and for civil use. If that's not an example of complicated industry, I don't know what is then.

And with 'modern' capitalism in Ukraine Antonov aircraft factory is as good as dead.

Ukraine produced a log of airplanes. Russia-made models were always a joke.

Russia (and also Uzbekistan!) produced all the mid- and long-haul airliners - Il, Yak and Tu. You don't know what you are talking about.

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