To paraphrase Uma Turman, it is the spirit of uninhibited innovation that USSR lacked, not the persistence and meticulousness (is that a right word?).
Several people mentioned it already and they are right. None of the hardware/software stolen in the 70-ies was used 'as is'. Hardware was reverse-engineered to the last bit, including peeling off the layers of the microchips to reveal the logic. The logic was validated and reproduced in the clones. Any abnormal piece of logic would inevitably surface. The software was butchered too, including replacement of all literal strings and production of 'design' documents that complied with USSR's own industry conventions/standards (which means all branching logic had to be analyzed).
Yes, the sheer amount of effort required for this has perhaps exceeded that of doing an independent design. But that was of secondary concern for the power elite - doing an 'own thing' requires taking responsibility for the results, which in the USSR's tradition might have meant rather unpleasant consequences. Enough to discourage true innovation on the top and supress it on the bottom.
All that said, I find this story too hard to believe. I knew several people directly involved in oil/gas industry in the 90-ies and they had only started introducing real computerized control systems into the pipelines (using western harware/software, LOL). To blow up in '82, a project of that magnitude would have to be started around '75 (Soviet economy had 5-year planning cycle). Control systems introduced in that period relied largely on analog designs and computers of pre-cloning-era vintage (cloning really took off in mid 70-ies). They were built using plain transistors (no chips), ferrite-solenoid memory, magnetic drums and tapes, punchcards/punchtapes. The one I worked with had 45 bits in a word. It was still on active duty in '93. And that was space field, not just some pipeline...
The last word in the second line is bogus (no such word in russian) so it could be the author meant something else. Filling that word by context would give more or less 'when you gonna learn that the real thing is better'.
That is just an old russian saying. It is applicable to any country though.
What appears to be silliest in the story is the conclusion how stuff like that has 'won' the Cold War.
That war is over not because US pulled some magic tricks. USSR is gone because it simply could not stand. It was rotten and of course, from the head. Incompetence of power is an inevitable byproduct of a tyranny that gets only worse with time and is aggravated by its size. That incompetence ultimately resulted in all the problems USSR had - being one of the most resource rich countries and having been one of the largest agriculture producers in the world back in 1913, it could not feed its population well let alone sustain the technological race or competition on the free market. Eventually not only the government got rotten - the same incompetence dominated industry and academia. When that happens, the regime is doomed. How soon the doom is however uncertain.
Could USSR have kept sticking up longer? Look at Cuba or North Korea... they haven't been around for as long as USSR yet, but they are worse economically than USSR been most of the time. All the US spooks could not bring them down for decades and not for the lack of trying. I suspect short of an Iraqi-style regime change, they will stick until something inside them triggers an unstoppable avalance and then they will crumble like USSR did.
So what really triggered its fall? Mostly it was Gorbachev. He opened up too big a can of worms and could not contain it (unlike chinese commies). When the rest of the power elite realized it is going to fall apart, it was too late.
Now, if Gorbachev was a CIA plant, then of course hats off to the spooks:)
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To paraphrase Uma Turman, it is the spirit of uninhibited innovation that USSR lacked, not the persistence and meticulousness (is that a right word?).
Several people mentioned it already and they are right. None of the hardware/software stolen in the 70-ies was used 'as is'. Hardware was reverse-engineered to the last bit, including peeling off the layers of the microchips to reveal the logic. The logic was validated and reproduced in the clones. Any abnormal piece of logic would inevitably surface. The software was butchered too, including replacement of all literal strings and production of 'design' documents that complied with USSR's own industry conventions/standards (which means all branching logic had to be analyzed).
Yes, the sheer amount of effort required for this has perhaps exceeded that of doing an independent design. But that was of secondary concern for the power elite - doing an 'own thing' requires taking responsibility for the results, which in the USSR's tradition might have meant rather unpleasant consequences. Enough to discourage true innovation on the top and supress it on the bottom.
All that said, I find this story too hard to believe. I knew several people directly involved in oil/gas industry in the 90-ies and they had only started introducing real computerized control systems into the pipelines (using western harware/software, LOL). To blow up in '82, a project of that magnitude would have to be started around '75 (Soviet economy had 5-year planning cycle). Control systems introduced in that period relied largely on analog designs and computers of pre-cloning-era vintage (cloning really took off in mid 70-ies). They were built using plain transistors (no chips), ferrite-solenoid memory, magnetic drums and tapes, punchcards/punchtapes. The one I worked with had 45 bits in a word. It was still on active duty in '93. And that was space field, not just some pipeline...
The last word in the second line is bogus (no such word in russian) so it could be the author meant something else. Filling that word by context would give more or less 'when you gonna learn that the real thing is better'.
That is just an old russian saying. It is applicable to any country though.
:)
What appears to be silliest in the story is the conclusion how stuff like that has 'won' the Cold War.
That war is over not because US pulled some magic tricks. USSR is gone because it simply could not stand. It was rotten and of course, from the head. Incompetence of power is an inevitable byproduct of a tyranny that gets only worse with time and is aggravated by its size. That incompetence ultimately resulted in all the problems USSR had - being one of the most resource rich countries and having been one of the largest agriculture producers in the world back in 1913, it could not feed its population well let alone sustain the technological race or competition on the free market. Eventually not only the government got rotten - the same incompetence dominated industry and academia. When that happens, the regime is doomed. How soon the doom is however uncertain.
Could USSR have kept sticking up longer? Look at Cuba or North Korea... they haven't been around for as long as USSR yet, but they are worse economically than USSR been most of the time. All the US spooks could not bring them down for decades and not for the lack of trying. I suspect short of an Iraqi-style regime change, they will stick until something inside them triggers an unstoppable avalance and then they will crumble like USSR did.
So what really triggered its fall? Mostly it was Gorbachev. He opened up too big a can of worms and could not contain it (unlike chinese commies). When the rest of the power elite realized it is going to fall apart, it was too late.
Now, if Gorbachev was a CIA plant, then of course hats off to the spooks