# Examples of Soviet engineering or technology that was superior to the US/West during the Cold War **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 8, 2015, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/examples-of-soviet-engineering-or-technology-that-was-superior-to-the-us-west-during-the-cold-war/717167 "2015-04-08T23:37:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2015, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/examples-of-soviet-engineering-or-technology-that-was-superior-to-the-us-west-during-the-cold-war/717167/81 "2015-04-16T12:22:08Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > They were quite innovative when it came to listening devices and other eavesdropping devices. They were the ones who came up with a bug planted in an ambassador’s shoe heel. In another case, they managed to plant a bug in the United States of America seal on the front of the ambassador’s podium. > > . That “bug” was “The Thing”, invented by Leon Theremin, the same guy who invented the electronic musical instrument named after him. > **[Leon Theremin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Theremin)** > > Lev Sergeyevich Termen\[a\] (27 August \[O.S. 15 August\] 1896 – 3 November 1993), better known as Leon Theremin was a Russian inventor, most famous for his invention of the theremin, one of the first electronic musical instruments and the first to be mass-produced. He also worked on early television research. His secret listening device, "The Thing", hung for seven years in plain view in the United States ambassador's Moscow office and enabled Soviet agents to eavesdrop on secret conversations. > Leo... “The Thing” was an utterly brilliant device, with no battery of its own – a passive device that some see as the precursor to RFID technology. It was installed in 1945 (!): > **[The Thing (listening device)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device))** > > The Thing, also known as the Great Seal bug, was one of the first covert listening devices (or "bugs") to use passive techniques to transmit an audio signal. It was concealed inside a gift given by the Soviet Union to W. Averell Harriman, the United States Ambassador to the Soviet Union, on August 4, 1945. Because it was passive, needing electromagnetic energy from an outside source to become energized and active, it is considered a predecessor of radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology.... ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2015, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/examples-of-soviet-engineering-or-technology-that-was-superior-to-the-us-west-during-the-cold-war/717167/82 "2015-04-16T12:28:00Z")
Wasn’t there a major scandal in the 1970s? it was found that the Soviets were bombarding the US embassy in Moscow, with microwave radiation? Supposedly, bugs were embedded in the walls, and would modulate the microwaves so that information could be carried in the reflected waves. was this true? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2015, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/examples-of-soviet-engineering-or-technology-that-was-superior-to-the-us-west-during-the-cold-war/717167/83 "2015-04-16T17:11:43Z")
> [@Habeed](#): > > [http://www.xilinx.com/support/documentation/application\_notes/xapp197.pdf](http://www.xilinx.com/support/documentation/application_notes/xapp197.pdf) > > It’s actually pretty easy to do, relatively speaking. You can use the same FPGA synthesis tools, you just use either special FPGAs that have the TMR implemented in the hardware itself, or you use synthesis libraries that will spec out your design by adding the additional logic automatically. > > By using FPGAs for this, in theory you can launch the same chip in your satellite that is used in millions of terrestrial uses, except that the chip in the satellite has the additional gates for each operation. This makes the chips cheaper and easier to obtain. > > Also, you can build lots of different satellites using the same few chips for all the digital logic tasks. > > The big advantage over this versus trying to do it in software is that there are vastly more failure modes in software - a corrupted bit could affect the instruction pointer in many different ways, sending execution off somewhere unknown. > > FPGA logic can be constructed in ways where this can’t happen - you don’t implement a general purpose CPU, you construct a machine that is only capable of very specific tasks. You do not have an instruction pointer - instead, discrete areas of circuitry run in parallel with each other perpetually, and data just flows from one region to another. Much easier to check the data flows for errors this way. > > The Mars Science Laboratory rover (Curiosity) uses this. An FPGA defect model would have to deal with both hits on gates and also hits on the underlying memory which defines the FPGA. I’d guess off the top of my head that this is more susceptible. Plus, there are lots of methods of reconfiguring FPGAs to work around defective logic blocks. For the general industry yields on chips with ternary gates (not FPGAs) would be an issue, but for probes and defense they make lots of chips and use very few, so they have a very different model. To get back to Russia, as I said the claim of increased accuracy is incorrect - and for that application ternary gates were overkill. There were a lot of interesting dead ends back then, the IBM1620 looked like a decimal machine at the instruction set level. ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2015, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/examples-of-soviet-engineering-or-technology-that-was-superior-to-the-us-west-during-the-cold-war/717167/84 "2015-04-16T17:48:13Z")
> [@XT](#): > > The AK-47 was most likely copied from the Sturmgewehr 44, but it brought it together and made it so it could be mass produced AND a weapon you could give a peasant with very little training or maintenance and know it would work. The Kalashnikov isn’t a copy of the Stg 44. Mechanically, they are not particularly similar. Stg 44 uses a tilting bolt, AK uses a rotating bolt, for example. They are similar only in concept: select fire intermediate cartridge rifles. The Russians had been experimenting with [intermediate cartridge rifles as early as 1915](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedorov_Avtomat). Other militaries tinkered with the idea during the inter-war years as well. The US, for example, fielded the .30 carbine as a result of wanting something with more power than a pistol or smg but without a rifle’s recoil. The Germans were the first to field what we might consider a “true assault rifle” in numbers and prove the concept but they didn’t come up with the idea and nobody could really be said to have copied them. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2015, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/examples-of-soviet-engineering-or-technology-that-was-superior-to-the-us-west-during-the-cold-war/717167/85 "2015-04-17T03:42:42Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > Wasn’t there a major scandal in the 1970s? it was found that the Soviets were bombarding the US embassy in Moscow, with microwave radiation? Supposedly, bugs were embedded in the walls, and would modulate the microwaves so that information could be carried in the reflected waves. was this true? Two stories: [The Thing (listening device) - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_%28listening_device%29) > **[Deal Made on Bugged U.S. Moscow Embassy (Published 1992)](https://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/20/world/deal-made-on-bugged-us-moscow-embassy.html)** ---
**Author:** ![Kenm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bc79bd/32.png) [@Kenm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kenm)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2015, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/examples-of-soviet-engineering-or-technology-that-was-superior-to-the-us-west-during-the-cold-war/717167/86 "2015-04-17T03:50:46Z")
East Germany made the best [**Duraplast car**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trabant) in the world. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2015, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/examples-of-soviet-engineering-or-technology-that-was-superior-to-the-us-west-during-the-cold-war/717167/87 "2015-04-17T05:38:35Z")
The Czechs brewed top-notch beer at the time. So did other places, outside of the US (we have since caught up). ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2015, 11:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/examples-of-soviet-engineering-or-technology-that-was-superior-to-the-us-west-during-the-cold-war/717167/88 "2015-04-17T11:35:55Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > Two stories: > > [The Thing (listening device) - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_%28listening_device%29) > > [http://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/20/world/deal-made-on-bugged-us-moscow-embassy.html](http://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/20/world/deal-made-on-bugged-us-moscow-embassy.html) Your first cite is the very one I posted just before **ralph** ’s, which he was responding to. It’s part of the Great Circle of Dope. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2015, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/examples-of-soviet-engineering-or-technology-that-was-superior-to-the-us-west-during-the-cold-war/717167/89 "2015-04-17T12:46:24Z")
Supercavitating torpedoes Also, “modern control theory” was a Russion invention. Russion mathematicians continued to be very good, and seem to have had a much better grasp of “modern control theory” at least up through the 1950’s. I think that Americans only really picked it up for use in the space program. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2015, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/examples-of-soviet-engineering-or-technology-that-was-superior-to-the-us-west-during-the-cold-war/717167/90 "2015-04-17T14:41:25Z")
Related, and touched on, and maybe of interest as a tangent: Recently I saw in [another Internet forum] a question/statement about the level of mathematics Soviet colleges (not graduate) being far more advanced from the get-go (difficult, etc.) than those in the US. Anyone encountered that? ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2015, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/examples-of-soviet-engineering-or-technology-that-was-superior-to-the-us-west-during-the-cold-war/717167/91 "2015-04-17T14:46:36Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > Related, and touched on, and maybe of interest as a tangent: > > Recently I saw in [another Internet forum] a question/statement about the level of mathematics Soviet colleges (not graduate) being far more advanced from the get-go (difficult, etc.) than those in the US. > > Anyone encountered that? I have a spouse and a number of friends who grew up in the USSR and went through their educational system and have degrees. They are from several different countries including Russia itself. From talks with them, they don’t seem to have been exposed to math any more complicated than I took in pursuit of my own degree. They had a few semesters of calculus and statistics, typically. Interestingly, none of them have much that is good to say about their college days. The consensus is that they spent way too much time on Marxist-Leninist theory rather than what they should have been learning. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2015, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/examples-of-soviet-engineering-or-technology-that-was-superior-to-the-us-west-during-the-cold-war/717167/92 "2015-04-17T14:47:30Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Your first cite is the very one I posted just before **ralph** ’s, which he was responding to. > > It’s part of the Great Circle of Dope. Actually, this one is. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2015, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/examples-of-soviet-engineering-or-technology-that-was-superior-to-the-us-west-during-the-cold-war/717167/93 "2015-04-17T19:37:15Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Your first cite is the very one I posted just before **ralph** ’s, which he was responding to. > > It’s part of the Great Circle of Dope. Ya, I could have done that better. Anyhoo, the first link touches on a 1945 gift to the US Ambassador containing a theremin bug. The second link refers to a $30 million US embassy construction project during the 1980s which was halted when it was discovered that there were too many listening devices in the walls to remove. The technology had [advanced](http://articles.latimes.com/1991-07-29/news/mn-177_1_embassy-building) a little: steel reinforcing rods were used as antennas. Discovered in 1982, former CIA chief and Defense Secretary James R. Schlesinger said, “We do not yet understand the technology nor the strategy”, of all of the equipment. So I guess the KGB had competitive spy capacities. A week ago I took a look at Soviet exports at the time. Lots of raw natural resources. That they didn’t have a single niche consumer or intermediate product that had any degree of success in the West is kind of pathetic. They could only compete against the Western military, which is another central planning system. (I pose a friendly challenge to my fellow Dopers to prove me wrong: kudos extended now.) Ok, ok: the Matryoshka dolls are kind of awesome. Fully competitive with the West. Also fur hats. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2015, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/examples-of-soviet-engineering-or-technology-that-was-superior-to-the-us-west-during-the-cold-war/717167/94 "2015-04-17T21:27:53Z")
Russian technology in WWII was even more basic-stuff like army clothing. While the Germans had their elaborate dress uniforms (which were useless in the winter), the Russian soldiers were equipped with padded insulated jackets and pants…with oversized felt boots which were packed with straw and rags. Not to nice, but the troops stayed warm and could fight in the bitter cold. The Germans had lousy winter gear-and paid a terrible price. ---
**Author:** ![TSBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@TSBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TSBG)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2015, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/examples-of-soviet-engineering-or-technology-that-was-superior-to-the-us-west-during-the-cold-war/717167/95 "2015-04-17T22:14:18Z")
I don’t know if the problem with German winter gear was so much that it was lousy as that they neglected to bring any because Hitler said they’d win by fall. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2015, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/examples-of-soviet-engineering-or-technology-that-was-superior-to-the-us-west-during-the-cold-war/717167/96 "2015-04-17T22:24:55Z")
> [@TSBG](#): > > I don’t know if the problem with German winter gear was so much that it was lousy as that they neglected to bring any because Hitler said they’d win by fall. True…you see pictures of the German troops in December 1941-many wrapped rags around their boots and wore captured bits of Russian clothing. Many froze to death because of Hitler’s hubris. ---
**Author:** ![SantaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/da6949/32.png) [@SantaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SantaMan)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2015, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/examples-of-soviet-engineering-or-technology-that-was-superior-to-the-us-west-during-the-cold-war/717167/97 "2015-04-18T01:03:53Z")
FWIW: Looking up the Theremin listening device got me to [this timeline of Russian invention](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Russian_innovation) One of the items that interested me was [Staged combustion cycle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staged_combustion_cycle) made it into the Space shuttle and Atlas rockets. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2015, 9:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/examples-of-soviet-engineering-or-technology-that-was-superior-to-the-us-west-during-the-cold-war/717167/98 "2015-04-18T09:15:03Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > True…you see pictures of the German troops in December 1941-many wrapped rags around their boots and wore captured bits of Russian clothing. Many froze to death because of Hitler’s hubris. Yeah, it’s not so much that Germany hadn’t gone down the Warm Clothing branch of the tech tree yet ; and more that the crazies up top had circle-jerked themselves into a hard certitude that the USSR would fall in five minutes, tops. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2015, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/examples-of-soviet-engineering-or-technology-that-was-superior-to-the-us-west-during-the-cold-war/717167/99 "2015-04-20T02:56:48Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > Related, and touched on, and maybe of interest as a tangent: > > Recently I saw in [another Internet forum] a question/statement about the level of mathematics Soviet colleges (not graduate) being far more advanced from the get-go (difficult, etc.) than those in the US. > > Anyone encountered that? The basic degree for a lot of people was an engineering degree. Like our liberal arts degree. Taxi driver? Engineering degree. Waitress? Engineering degree. The ordinary level of these ordinary degrees was not exceptional. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2015, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/examples-of-soviet-engineering-or-technology-that-was-superior-to-the-us-west-during-the-cold-war/717167/100 "2015-04-20T21:39:57Z")
> [@Melbourne](#): > > The basic degree for a lot of people was an engineering degree. Like our liberal arts degree. Taxi driver? Engineering degree. Waitress? Engineering degree. The ordinary level of these ordinary degrees was not exceptional. [Did I mention I’m posting this from Paris?] Interesting. At a Polish diner by me in NYC, I said good morning in Polish (of my three memorized sentences) to a waitress, who said, basically, “I’m no fucking Pole, I’m a Russian.” Anyway, she then said she shouldn’t even be doing this shit (waitressing) because she was “a mechanical engineer.” The word “AutoCAD” was unfamiliar to her however, which made me wonder. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/examples-of-soviet-engineering-or-technology-that-was-superior-to-the-us-west-during-the-cold-war/717167.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/examples-of-soviet-engineering-or-technology-that-was-superior-to-the-us-west-during-the-cold-war/717167.md?page=6)