Comment by dimitar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dimitar | Hacker News Reader

Practically all of the economy of the Soviet Union was the military-industrial complex and that complex had to pretend it wasn't only that.

All industry was dedicated to manufacturing weapons - what was produced for civilians was a side-production and small part of the output.

For example - practically all of the aluminium in the Soviet Union was used for the military. And most of the aluminium was used for rocketry and aviation - again military. And you have a big cities like Dnipropetrovsk in Ukraine called Rocket city for having a huge concentration of such plants.

Now space exploration sounded good because it is one of the few areas the Soviet Union could compete with US AND it was convenient to explain why Socialism needs so many rockets.

The scientific progress might even eventually improve living standards might one wishfully think. Of course it didn't, at least it wasn't allowed to.

Eventually, most of the military-industrial complex was disbanded and it is only logical that the space cult was thrown in the dustbin on recent history.

Nowadays Russia has only a fraction of it is former military output and there isn't any point in pretending it is smaller, quite the opposite, the government think it is important to display it is military might.

Bold claims require proper sourcing. Otherwise it's perilously close to trolling.

Perhaps start by explaining why that complex had to pretend "it wasn't only that"?

Man, he is mostly right. Almost everything industrial in the USSR was either military, or dual purpose. E.g. in my home town huge chemical plant was supposed to produce chemical fiber, however if needed in 24 hrs it could be switched to produce explosives.

Was it in Chernihiv by any chance?

Never heard of ЗХВ-type plant in CHernihiv. There was one in Cherkassy, one in Svetlogorsk (Belarus), one in Sillamae (Estonia), one in Daugavpils (Latvia). Later two were sold for $1 to Tolaram Fibers, which basically shut down plants the next day and fired around 3500 people from each one of them in the 90-ies. UPD: there are others, but I do not know details. The design of the plant is 60-es. The one in Daugavpils built in 1963. Currently what remains of it is owned by french Rhodia.

The plant wasn't pretending it wasn't only capable of producing explosives, it was actually producing fiber.

You wont't believe, but driving chains plant in the same location was capable to produce and fix damaged T-72s. Actually it still can, and current owner has a collection of Soviet tanks, driving on small parade on the 9th of May each year. UPD: have a look - T34 and ИС-2 on the backyard of Driving Chains Plant - http://www.gorod.lv/novosti/253080-v-daugavpilse-strelyali-s...

Thanks for sharing this

That's true of many industrial process; they're often inherently dual-use and it's only a matter of time/effort before the hardware is re-purposed[1]. Fun Fact: if you're sophisticated enough to have an agricultural organophosphate pesticide plant making, say, malathion or diazinon (i.e. not particularly sophisticated), it's a straightforward process tweak using the similar chemical precursors to produce nerve agents like Sarin.

If you're interested in more, the Wassenar agreement[2] is the framework within which dual-use non-proliferation is dealt with. It's kind of daunting to see how much industrial output is considered dual-use.

[1] One should, of course, always be dubious of claims like "24 hrs" out of context. Such things are famously exaggerated and often posited on contrived pre-conditions like "all safety protocols ignored", "all raw materials and additional personnel already on site and ready" and "logistics infrastructure already converted to military needs".

[2] http://www.wassenaar.org/

That isn't a bold claim at all - there was a cultural battle on the world stage between the USSR and the US as to which had the better society. Being perceived as nothing but a war machine would have lost that battle for the USSR.

Any sources that USSR was a "war machine"? Being perceived by whom, where and when?

Please stop with this obsession with sources, unless you have sources to the contrary.

I never claimed that the USSR was a war machine. I was simply explaining why the complex had to pretend that it 'wasn't only that', as requested by abcd_f. If you accept that there was a cultural battle going on, this explanation requires no further sourcing. If you do not accept there was a cultural battle, I suggest a little Googling because this is not an extraordinary claim.

The issue is not the existence of the cultural battle, the issue are your claims that the USSR was perceived to be a war machine. Like if I claim that the US is perceived to be a war machine, I need sources.

Of course the US tries to say it's not a war machine, just like the USSR did, but just trying to say you're not a war machine doesn't actually mean that people think you're a war machine.

Nowhere did I claim that the USSR was perceived to be a war machine. You have not read the comments properly.

Military spending by the USSR was about 16% of GDP. US (and Russia today) is more like 3-4%, and that's very high by global standards. It's not quite "war machine" (the UK hit about 50% in WWII, North Korea sits on about 30%), but it was a huge amount.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com