# 'It was invented in Russia!' **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 25, 2018, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-invented-in-russia/809548 "2018-02-25T15:47:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2018, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-invented-in-russia/809548/1 "2018-02-25T15:47:03Z")
On _Star Trek_ Ensign Checkov liked to claim well-known things were invented in Russia. Where did this come from? I have a vague memory of hearing something about the Soviet Union claiming to have invented the Douglas DC-3, or something like that. But what was or were the specific occurrence or occurrences that caused the joke to come about? ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2018, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-invented-in-russia/809548/2 "2018-02-25T15:51:20Z")
Previous discussion ["Red Nightmare" Claims--Question #2 - Factual Questions - Straight Dope Message Board](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=741112) ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2018, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-invented-in-russia/809548/3 "2018-02-25T18:13:08Z")
It’s just making fun of a particular manifestation of national pride wherein patriots claim inventions for their own country. It’s nothing specific to the Soviet Union. Heck, Britons, Americans, and Germans have been fighting for decades over who first invented the computer. Britons, Americans, and Indians routinely fight over who invented the airplane. ---
**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2018, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-invented-in-russia/809548/4 "2018-02-25T18:50:36Z")
> [@psychonaut](#): > > … Britons, Americans, and Indians routinely fight over who invented the airplane. As well as the Brazilians. ---
**Author:** ![jasg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f0a364/32.png) [@jasg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jasg)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2018, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-invented-in-russia/809548/5 "2018-02-25T19:58:26Z")
> [@yabob](#): > > As well as the Brazilians. but we all know it was the [Kiwis](http://www.ctie.monash.edu.au/hargrave/pearse1.html)… ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2018, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-invented-in-russia/809548/6 "2018-02-25T21:00:07Z")
> [@psychonaut](#): > > It’s just making fun of a particular manifestation of national pride wherein patriots claim inventions for their own country. It’s nothing specific to the Soviet Union. Heck, Britons, Americans, and Germans have been fighting for decades over who first invented the computer. Britons, Americans, and Indians routinely fight over who invented the airplane. While there are often competing claims for inventions from different nations, [the Soviet Union took it to new heights.](http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2003/08/15/2003063835) They claimed that Russians invented radio, television, the airplane, the light bulb, and many others attributed elsewhere to other inventors. Some claims had more justification than others. By the 1960s this was a standing joke. I remember this practice mentioned in Mad magazine from this era. Chekov’s claims were just a riff on this. ---
**Author:** ![JWT\_Kottekoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3ec8ea/32.png) [@JWT\_Kottekoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JWT_Kottekoe)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2018, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-invented-in-russia/809548/7 "2018-02-26T03:20:35Z")
And what we Americans learn in school isn’t necessarily true either. For example, Edison did not invent the light bulb and Morse invented neither the telegraph nor Morse code. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2018, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-invented-in-russia/809548/8 "2018-02-26T04:16:29Z")
One of the more far-fetched of Stalin’s claims was that [Russians had invented baseball.](http://www.johnjeansonne.com/?p=1338)Romania has a claim too. ---
**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:** [February 26, 2018, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-invented-in-russia/809548/9 "2018-02-26T05:23:10Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > While there are often competing claims for inventions from different nations, [the Soviet Union took it to new heights.](http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2003/08/15/2003063835) They claimed that Russians invented radio, television, the airplane, the light bulb, and many others attributed elsewhere to other inventors. Some claims had more justification than others. > > By the 1960s this was a standing joke. I remember this practice mentioned in Mad magazine from this era. Chekov’s claims were just a riff on this. I can confirm this. It was a common meme long before Star Trek, and pretty much everyone viewing then got Gerrold’s joke. ---
**Author:** ![OldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3bc359/32.png) [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2018, 5:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-invented-in-russia/809548/10 "2018-02-26T05:37:00Z")
> [@JWT\_Kottekoe](#): > > And what we Americans learn in school isn’t necessarily true either. For example, Edison did not invent the light bulb and Morse invented neither the telegraph nor Morse code. It is my understanding that Morse (and Gall and Vail) invented a much different telegraph than the one that Cooke and Wheatstone invented in Britain, and it was certainly the one used throughout the U.S. The British one worked more like a typewriter and printed the characters. I suspect that made it slower and it was never commercially adopted. He also invented a Morse code that was all numbers and required a code book. Vail expanded this to include letters similar to but not identical to the International Morse Code now used. One difference I recall was that were pauses in some letters and O was: dot pause dot making SOS dot dot dot (long pause) dot (short pause) dot (long pause) dot dot dot. Though I don’t know if SOS was adopted before the modern code came into play. ---
**Author:** ![JWT\_Kottekoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3ec8ea/32.png) [@JWT\_Kottekoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JWT_Kottekoe)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2018, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-invented-in-russia/809548/11 "2018-02-26T05:58:02Z")
It has been a long time since I read a biography of Morse, but my recollection was that his invention was not the telegraph, but a particularly complex multi-wire version of the electrical telegraph. There were many prior inventions, including a binary-coded system invented by none other than Gauss. Morse’s invention was impractical and it was his employee Vail who developed this into a more practical and much simplified design, which was commercially successful. To use it required a coding scheme. The biography I read gave the credit for the Morse code to Vail; but I just read the Wikipedia article on Vail and apparently, how much credit he deserves for the Morse Code is debated by scholars. ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2018, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-invented-in-russia/809548/12 "2018-02-26T06:09:42Z")
In Russia inventions invent… … never mind. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Steken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@Steken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steken)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2018, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-invented-in-russia/809548/13 "2018-02-26T06:18:23Z")
_Goodness Gracious Me_, a British sketch comedy show series about Indian Brits, had an “ultra-patriotic uncle” character who kept claiming that all sort of things were invented in India. I myself heard a _lot_ of such claims travelling through Iran about a decade ago. Everything from air conditioning to human rights to _Tom & Jerry_ (yes, really!) and _Harry Potter_ (yes, really!!). ---
**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:** [February 26, 2018, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-invented-in-russia/809548/14 "2018-02-26T12:21:15Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > One of the more far-fetched of Stalin’s claims was that [Russians had invented baseball.](http://www.johnjeansonne.com/?p=1338)Romania has a claim too. This was (in part) the subject of one of Alistair Cooke’s columns way back when, entitled _Bezbol_, but I can’t find it or a description of it online. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2018, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-invented-in-russia/809548/15 "2018-02-26T12:40:06Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > One of the more far-fetched of Stalin’s claims was that [Russians had invented baseball.](http://www.johnjeansonne.com/?p=1338)Romania has a claim too. In the previously cited thread, I [wrote](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17910087&postcount=21) about actually hearing this on Radio Moscow on shortwave radio way back when. Nowadays I presume people hear this from planted stories on Facebook. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2018, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-invented-in-russia/809548/16 "2018-02-26T15:43:20Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > One of the more far-fetched of Stalin’s claims was that [Russians had invented baseball.](http://www.johnjeansonne.com/?p=1338)Romania has a claim too. I don’t believe that. I can believe they invented the designated hitter. Godless commies. And, it’s “inwented”. ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2018, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-invented-in-russia/809548/17 "2018-02-26T15:45:59Z")
Relevant TV Tropes [page](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InTheOriginalKlingon). As the title of that page implies, it’s been done (for a long time) for origins other than Russian, but it seems that Russian is the old standby (in US cultural circles, anyway). ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2018, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-invented-in-russia/809548/18 "2018-02-26T15:50:21Z")
[Chekov’s claims about Russia.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC6W8J0j8Co) “The Garden of Eden was just outside Moscow.” “Scotch was invented by a little old lady outside of Leningrad.” ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2018, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-invented-in-russia/809548/19 "2018-02-26T16:00:52Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > This was (in part) the subject of one of Alistair Cooke’s columns way back when, entitled _Bezbol_, but I can’t find it or a description of it online. I have the column, which is from 1952, in his book _Fun & Games with Alistair Cooke_. > [@](#): > > According to _Smena_, the official periodical of the Young Communist League, Russian peasants played lapta in all its classless purity for many centuries before the game was smuggled into the United States and transformed into a mocking demonstration of the class struggle. The rest of the article itself mocks the Russians in hideous phonetics (“A bol is heet by a better who then ron aronn tree becks of send or bessiz”) and silly cliches. It may have wowed them in 1952 but it don’t reed nun gud in 2018. The Wikipedia article on [lapta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapta_(game))shows that it was indeed a pitch and hit game that seems much like a forerunner of baseball, which, as everybody should know, Americans [adapted](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball#Origins)rather than invented. Yeah, Russia did a lot of bragging about its inventions. They were in competition with us and good at propaganda. But Americans were really and truly obnoxious in their uneducated and ahistoric bragging and deserved whatever they got in return. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2018, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-invented-in-russia/809548/20 "2018-02-26T17:32:02Z")
[Did you know that Shakespeare was a Klingon?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsCVuO1yeJc) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-invented-in-russia/809548.md?page=2)