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The Soviet Union was able to innovate in the areas they chose to sink resources into but innovation was clearly not as widespread as evidenced by their decades

The Soviet Union was able to innovate in the areas they chose to sink resources into but innovation was clearly not as widespread as evidenced by their decades of stagnation from the 60s onwards. They were still innovating in military technology in the 80s but analysis since their collapse analysis that they were at least 20% of GDP on defence, if not as high as 40%. The West managed to match and surpass Soviet military and scientific advances without sacrificing consumer goods or the economic wellbeing of their people.

pastage 6mo ago
I am very sure the west sacrificed a lot of wellbeing because of the vast amount of money spent on war. Peace time was great.
- deepsun 6mo ago
  Not true. We spent more taxpayers' money on 2008 banks bailout than on every and any war (+ space race) combined. Also, investing into military tech prevents war on your territory, which is, well, highly disruptive.
  - titzer 6mo ago
    According to this [https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/costs-us-nuclear-weapons/ https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/costs-us-nuclear-weapo...], the US has already spent more than five trillion dollars on nuclear weapons.
    - hunterpayne 6mo ago
      Over 85 years and that's an inflation adjusted number. We give away more money each year (USAID/soft power efforts) than we spent on average on nuclear weapons. And neither of those items are of much significance on the US federal budget. Currently, social safety net programs are half of the federal budget and the total military budget is about 1/6th of the budget for reference (that's 2/3rd total between those two parts of the budget).
      - pastage 6mo ago
        No. My point is not that something costs more than something else. Look at a city and the traffic there we know that everything can either feel empty with only a ~8% decrease, or be completely gridlocked with a ~8% increase. Small adjustments in what we spend money on has a great effect. Being destructive is the easiest way to show this. If you bomb a hospital, does that cost ten million USD for the bombs or one billion USD to rebuild and handle loss of quality of life.
      - titzer 6mo ago
        CBO estimates $95 billion/year maintaining and modernization nuclear weapons for the next 10 years: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61362 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61362 Total USAID budget: $50 billion in 2023, $19 billion in 2026. https://www.usaspending.gov/agency/agency-for-international-development?fy=2026 https://www.usaspending.gov/agency/agency-for-international-... > And neither of those items are of much significance on the US federal budget. $95 billion / year is $620 per US taxpayer. > social safety net programs are half of the federal budget I suppose you are referring to the big 3: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Those are programs that people pay for. In the same way that retirement savings, pensions, and private health insurance is something that people pay for. But whatever, every dollar wasted to blow up people in another country can be excused because the federal budget includes programs that provide services to people in this country...or something. It is extremely revealing how some people are completely unbothered by some spending and are extremely bothered by other spending. The nuclear weapons don't bother you, but spending a bit of money to help alleviate famine for people in destitute countries is just unacceptable.
  - enoint 6mo ago
    Wasn’t the bottom line a net gain?
bequanna 6mo ago
I'm not trying to downplay their accomplishments, but how much of their scientific advances from the 40s-60s were due to capturing ex-Nazi tech (and scientists) or stealing from the US via their incredible intelligence efforts?
- calvinmorrison 6mo ago
  and or lend lease?
- inglor_cz 6mo ago
  Depends on the sector. They definitely supported a lot of their rocket science from found documentation in Peenemünde et. al. (The personnel OTOH did its best not to fall into Soviet hands, and most of them ended in America, even though some didn't make it and were captured by the Soviets.) They had genuine excellency in mathematics and theoretical physics. First, those specializations didn't require much expensive or advanced equipment back then. Second, by their very nature, they were freer from ideological bullshit than other specializations, and that alone attracted many of the best and brightest there. (I can confirm that even in late-stage Communist Czechoslovakia, very hard sciences were considered an intellectual haven for non-conformists. The ideologues didn't understand them and did not consider them subversive per se.) On the other hand, biology was under full tyranny of Lysenko et. al. and "bourgeoise geneticists" would get imprisoned in concentration camps and even executed or starved to death. As a result, Soviet biology never recovered to a respectable science again, not even after Lysenko lost his power. Until today, you will find ex-Soviet textbooks of maths and physics all over the net, and people actually download them and use them to study. That does not apply in most other domains.
  - aleph_minus_one 6mo ago
    > On the other hand, biology was under full tyranny of Lysenko et. al. and "bourgeoise geneticists" would get imprisoned in concentration camps and even executed or starved to death. As a result, Soviet biology never recovered to a respectable science again, not even after Lysenko lost his power. This holds for "pure" biology. On the other hand, for medicine, in the East Block phage therapy was intensively developed (which in the West was barely done; instead in the Western countries there was an intense development of antibiotics). > https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Phage_therapy&oldid=1341976626 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Phage_therapy&old... "In the Soviet Union, extensive research and development soon began in this field. [...] Isolated from Western advances in antibiotic production in the 1940s, Soviet scientists continued to develop already successful phage therapy to treat the wounds of soldiers in field hospitals. During World War II, the Soviet Union used bacteriophages to treat soldiers infected with various bacterial diseases, such as dysentery and gangrene. Soviet researchers continued to develop and to refine their treatments and to publish their research and results. However, due to the scientific barriers of the Cold War, this knowledge was not translated and did not proliferate across the world."
throwaway27448 6mo ago
Innovation is a term inherently tied to products sold at markets in product cycles that change over time. I think you're looking for the term invention.
- divan 6mo ago
  An invention is a new device, method, or way of doing something that did not exist before. Innovation is anything that significantly improves real world processes or products. I believe the literature uses term "innovation systems" regardless of type of economies.

pastage 6mo ago

I am very sure the west sacrificed a lot of wellbeing because of the vast amount of money spent on war. Peace time was great.

deepsun 6mo ago
Not true. We spent more taxpayers' money on 2008 banks bailout than on every and any war (+ space race) combined. Also, investing into military tech prevents war on your territory, which is, well, highly disruptive.
- titzer 6mo ago
  According to this [https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/costs-us-nuclear-weapons/ https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/costs-us-nuclear-weapo...], the US has already spent more than five trillion dollars on nuclear weapons.
  - hunterpayne 6mo ago
    Over 85 years and that's an inflation adjusted number. We give away more money each year (USAID/soft power efforts) than we spent on average on nuclear weapons. And neither of those items are of much significance on the US federal budget. Currently, social safety net programs are half of the federal budget and the total military budget is about 1/6th of the budget for reference (that's 2/3rd total between those two parts of the budget).
    - pastage 6mo ago
      No. My point is not that something costs more than something else. Look at a city and the traffic there we know that everything can either feel empty with only a ~8% decrease, or be completely gridlocked with a ~8% increase. Small adjustments in what we spend money on has a great effect. Being destructive is the easiest way to show this. If you bomb a hospital, does that cost ten million USD for the bombs or one billion USD to rebuild and handle loss of quality of life.
    - titzer 6mo ago
      CBO estimates $95 billion/year maintaining and modernization nuclear weapons for the next 10 years: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61362 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61362 Total USAID budget: $50 billion in 2023, $19 billion in 2026. https://www.usaspending.gov/agency/agency-for-international-development?fy=2026 https://www.usaspending.gov/agency/agency-for-international-... > And neither of those items are of much significance on the US federal budget. $95 billion / year is $620 per US taxpayer. > social safety net programs are half of the federal budget I suppose you are referring to the big 3: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Those are programs that people pay for. In the same way that retirement savings, pensions, and private health insurance is something that people pay for. But whatever, every dollar wasted to blow up people in another country can be excused because the federal budget includes programs that provide services to people in this country...or something. It is extremely revealing how some people are completely unbothered by some spending and are extremely bothered by other spending. The nuclear weapons don't bother you, but spending a bit of money to help alleviate famine for people in destitute countries is just unacceptable.
- enoint 6mo ago
  Wasn’t the bottom line a net gain?

bequanna 6mo ago

I'm not trying to downplay their accomplishments, but how much of their scientific advances from the 40s-60s were due to capturing ex-Nazi tech (and scientists) or stealing from the US via their incredible intelligence efforts?

calvinmorrison 6mo ago
and or lend lease?
inglor_cz 6mo ago
Depends on the sector. They definitely supported a lot of their rocket science from found documentation in Peenemünde et. al. (The personnel OTOH did its best not to fall into Soviet hands, and most of them ended in America, even though some didn't make it and were captured by the Soviets.) They had genuine excellency in mathematics and theoretical physics. First, those specializations didn't require much expensive or advanced equipment back then. Second, by their very nature, they were freer from ideological bullshit than other specializations, and that alone attracted many of the best and brightest there. (I can confirm that even in late-stage Communist Czechoslovakia, very hard sciences were considered an intellectual haven for non-conformists. The ideologues didn't understand them and did not consider them subversive per se.) On the other hand, biology was under full tyranny of Lysenko et. al. and "bourgeoise geneticists" would get imprisoned in concentration camps and even executed or starved to death. As a result, Soviet biology never recovered to a respectable science again, not even after Lysenko lost his power. Until today, you will find ex-Soviet textbooks of maths and physics all over the net, and people actually download them and use them to study. That does not apply in most other domains.
- aleph_minus_one 6mo ago
  > On the other hand, biology was under full tyranny of Lysenko et. al. and "bourgeoise geneticists" would get imprisoned in concentration camps and even executed or starved to death. As a result, Soviet biology never recovered to a respectable science again, not even after Lysenko lost his power. This holds for "pure" biology. On the other hand, for medicine, in the East Block phage therapy was intensively developed (which in the West was barely done; instead in the Western countries there was an intense development of antibiotics). > https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Phage_therapy&oldid=1341976626 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Phage_therapy&old... "In the Soviet Union, extensive research and development soon began in this field. [...] Isolated from Western advances in antibiotic production in the 1940s, Soviet scientists continued to develop already successful phage therapy to treat the wounds of soldiers in field hospitals. During World War II, the Soviet Union used bacteriophages to treat soldiers infected with various bacterial diseases, such as dysentery and gangrene. Soviet researchers continued to develop and to refine their treatments and to publish their research and results. However, due to the scientific barriers of the Cold War, this knowledge was not translated and did not proliferate across the world."

throwaway27448 6mo ago

Innovation is a term inherently tied to products sold at markets in product cycles that change over time. I think you're looking for the term invention.

divan 6mo ago
An invention is a new device, method, or way of doing something that did not exist before. Innovation is anything that significantly improves real world processes or products. I believe the literature uses term "innovation systems" regardless of type of economies.