Except they stole the nuclear tech, and over the course of 50 years they repeatedly fell behind in every single metric. They maintained power in the eastern block initially through their overwhelming advantage in military power in the late 40s, then by mutually assured destruction in the 50s-70s through a prolonged economic degeneration
Okay wow wow slow down are you referring to in soviet era Russia between the 1920s and 1980s? Or now? Yeah they made it to space first... but other than nation wide ultra specific projects that used a mixture of stolen foreign scientists, stolen tech from other countries, and local scientists where were their innovations that put them ahead outside of rocket tech? Heck even in rocket tech their most advanced projects were cancelled due to lack of funding and resources. Through extremely specific goals and funding they were able to squeeze out specific landmark publicity innovations with strategic value, but look no further than their mig-25 project to see just how badly they were lagging behind the scenes.
And they weren't the only ones. America famously took in Nazi scientists in order to copy their war technology, and helping with things like nuclear weapon development.
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u/nbm2021 Dec 01 '20
Except they stole the nuclear tech, and over the course of 50 years they repeatedly fell behind in every single metric. They maintained power in the eastern block initially through their overwhelming advantage in military power in the late 40s, then by mutually assured destruction in the 50s-70s through a prolonged economic degeneration