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> so much of what the Soviets worked on feels rooted in a sort of “that’ll show them!” inferiority complex

That's what the Cold War was about, innit? Same reason why the US went to the moon.

My perception was that the Cold War was partly about exploiting this trait, forcing them into financial ruin by running races they couldn’t help but compete in.

A short and fun to read corrective is Kotkin's Armageddon Averted. The competition, inefficiency and the demands of its own power projections were a costly strain but nowhere close to leading to ruin or an irrecoverable state.

Except the US actually made it to the moon with functional equipment and not Ekranoplanz.

The soviets put the first satellite and man in space, so I bet they had functional equipment too

First woman in space too, and a very long list of other firsts some of which remain untouched by anyone else (eg landing in the surface of Venus and sending digital pictures back). Valentina Tereshkova went to space in 1963, at a time when women in the US had to ask their husband’s permission to open a bank account.

They did not get to the moon though did they, which is what we were discussing.

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