Cloning?

[parsifal]

My Grandfather was still using horse and carts for agriculture in 1946, and we got the first electricity connections in 1948. He lived not far from where I live now, about 5 miles outside a major regional centre that during the war was a major producer of small arms.

Australia at that time was proabably more developed than many of the smaller Eastern European nations. Many countries had incomplete infrastructure.


I agree with Tomo to some extent. Its a convenient myth to describe the Soviets as a backwater in the 30's. Its cities were at leasty as well urbanised as any in the west. Many parts of the rural land remained underdeveloped, and there were shortages of grain and other foodstuffs as a result, but you dont make planes in the country, you make them in the city and Soviet cities were as advanced as any in the west. And Soviet heavy industry had been greatly modernized and expanded during the 5 year plans, to the extent that the germans greatly under-estimated the Soviet industrial capabilty in pretty much the same way as is happening here right now.

Having said that, there is no denying that in certain respects the Soviets were backward. thats what makes it so hard to compare them to us. My stepfather is from Berlin, and he rememebers that at the end of the war, it was quite common to see the Soviet soldiers drinking and washing from the toilet. They had simply never seen one before and didnt know what it was for. He saw many times vehicles and machinery siply abandoned because they ran out of petrol, or had a flat battery, or the like, because the users of that equipment had not been shown what to do with engines or how to maintain equipment.

Things were made different after the war. Soviet society became some the best educated and trained in the world. From first hand experience i can say their soldiers were extremely well trained and competetent. I expect their workforce was very similr. that process of literising the population had in fact began before the war, but was far from complete.

 

[Shortround6]

It maybe somewhat in between. I remember reading (over 40 years ago) a book that was old then that was praising the advances the communists made during the 20s and 30s. Russia under the Czar's WAS a rather backward nation, perhaps less so than India or China in 1900-1915 but that is not saying a whole lot either. While it had some Industry, it was small. One statistic was something like 29 blast furnaces in 1917(which may be propaganda, another sources says only 28 out of 63 were running due to lack of fuel) Motor industry was practically non-existent. Production by the dozen or hundreds rather than by thousands in France, England and America? The vast distances in Russia certainly work against electrification away from the cities. Russians were put a lot of effort into hydrofoils and air cushion river ferries in the 1950s and 1960s becasue they still depended a lot on rivers as avenues of transportation because even the rail net was not well developed let alone roads.
The Russians lost a number of years right after WW I fighting each other and then were isolated from the rest of the world to some extent (self isolated or shunned or both?) so even the Communists got a late start (very late 20s) in getting things going again.

There can also be a tremendous difference between 10-20% motorized agriculture and 50-60% motorized agriculture and "fully mechanized agriculture". I am not sure the US even hit "fully mechanized agriculture" in a practical sense (Amish communities and the like excepted) until some point after WW II.

The communists made some great advances but in such a large country numbers mean a lot and in a lot of cases things have to be looked at on a 'per capita' basis and not just raw numbers.
Picking starting points is rather hard too.

I just found this book on the internet.

The Soviet Economy and the Red Army, 1930-1945

The First and Second 5 year plans (starting in 1928 ) were to compress over 50 years of industrial development into 10 years. This was done by wholesale importation of western technology (both Knowledge and equipment). A strict standardization of equipment.

The Russians did a very good job of catch up but the target was moving. A first class steel mill or truck or airplane engine in 1930 or 31 was not a first class steel mill or truck or airplane engine in the rest of the world in 1939-40.

While there were many talented Russians there weren't enough talented, educated Russians to do the work needed. in 1928 over 400 American engineers made the drawings for the Magnitogorsk steel plant. After construction stalled 250 US engineers went to Russia to supervise construction. This was the first steel plant built since 1917. General Electric was brought in to work on the electrical installation. over 104 major contracts with western nations had been placed by March of 1930.

Starting from so far back in such a large country many areas or sectors of the economy were sidelined or push back to the "next" 5 year plan. The Russians made some great strides in a number of basic industries but many industries were still small and producing out dated designs when WW II started.

 

[parsifal]

another observation that i think is worth mentioning is that most histories, and the veterans i have spoken to at various times, generally commented on the ruggedness, simplicity and reliability of russian equipment. ive read stories about how the russian air force could fly at times when the LW was grounded. Guderian comments somewhere in his book about how the germans found out about one of the russian tricks that kept their aircraft flying....light a fire under the aircraft. this was done to thaw the frozen crankcase oil. apparently it worked, but no machine will put up with that sort of abuse for long....Russian or western. Plus the russians were completely uncaring about losses, which meant, for the air force, that if the overall plan called for flights to be made, regardless of the weather, then you flew, whatever the risk and whatever the cost.

We often in this place, and others just like it, hear about how technically supoerior german equipment was compared to Soviet stuff. For example, most people believe the MP38 to be superior to anything the russian built. On the face of it, there is argument to support that. yet for the people who actually really do know, like my stepfather, this is utter bunkim. he has told me that german soldiers would happily chuck their fancy schmeissers in the rubbish (or more likley give it to someone else) in favour of a PPSH that they might find, because the PPSH was just so much more reliable, rugged and effective in the conditions they were fighting. if the PPSH were an aircraft, and we were looking at it from the comfort of our terminals, as we are, we would class the PPSH as the rubbish....made from antiquated wooden stocks, discarded gun barrels, lacking in frills and refinement, we could easily make a case that it was rubbish....and we would be utterly wrong.

 

[tomo pauk]

Thanks for the feedback. My intention was to point out that, in late 30's, even between Western countries there was notable differences in the levels of literacy, electrification and industrialization. We can compare Germany with Italy, France with Spain. Even between the different parts of the same country. Saying that Soviet Russia was 'backward' on those three categories is a vast egrageration. I agree that, unvillingly, many Soviet citizens paid the ultimate price for ideas, or 'ideas' of their leaders.

 

[nuuumannn]

My intention was to point out that, in late 30's, even between Western countries there was notable differences in the levels of literacy, electrification and industrialization. We can compare Germany with Italy, France with Spain. Even between the different parts of the same country. Saying that Soviet Russia was 'backward' on those three categories is a vast exaggeration.

You do have a point Tomo, but not a vast exaggeration at all. Essentially the degree of education and mechanisation available to the average Soviet citizen was far less than the population of nations such as Western Europe, Britain and the USA between the wars. Russia had a lot of catching up to do to meet similar standards as the West - as their leaders were so fond of reminding the West of how far they had come and that their society was equal to the West - a measure of progress in a growing society is not just how many aircraft factories the country has, or how many ship yards or how big the cities are, but how the poorer members of society are treated/educated and comparatively, with the Soviet Union's vast peasant population that did have its liberties forcefully removed, Soviet society was far worse off.

Not to mention the fact that more Soviet citizens lived in rural areas or were poorer peasants in the cities than there were (relatively) better off city dwellers, so a larger percentage (I don't know what) of the population were poverty stricken than not. As Shortround points out, electrifying the countryside as big as the Soviet Union was a difficult task, all things considered.

In rural communities the church provided guidance in many areas, particularly education during Tsarist times, this carried through into Soviet times until Stalin went about denouncing the church. Roaming priests or soothsayers would advise on spiritual matters (Rasputin was supposedly one of these), which had a direct imapct on people's lives, how and when they planted crops etc. With churches and convents being burned to the ground and nuns and priests being either sent to worker's camps or executed, many communities lost hope and so much more.

Stalin's purges put Soviet military and industrial capability behind the West - his destructive land reform policies crippled the country - hence my claim of the country being backward at that time. He wasn't the only one to do so; Khrushchev also implemented a land reform policy that caused famine in the late 1950s as a result of a drought - he insisted on planting corn - lots of corn on patches of land often unsuitable for the crop. Drought did the rest, also killing off grain production. This led to the Russians doing something completely unexpected - they asked the United States to supply them with grain, which the US did until 1980 when President Carter brought a halt to the practise.

Like Parsifal, I too, have had personal contact with Soviet citizens, one of whom lived in the Stalin era, I've also travelled within post Soviet Russia and although I don't pretend to be an expert on the country, I've learned a lot about it; it's a fascinating place for a Westerner to visit and discover. The food is dreadful though!

 

[tyrodtom]

Britain built the Mosquito out of wood because they didn't produce much aluminum. The same reason some WWII Soviet aircraft were made of wood.

1939 Germany produced more aluminum then anyone else. Why would they build a wooden aircraft?

You have said that so many times I decided to check. Germany mave have processed more aluminum than any other other country in 1939, but by mid-war that was immaterial as she fell far behind the allies in Bauxite refining. Plus the great majority of Germany's bauxite ( the ore aliminum is derived from) was imported from Hungary, Yugoslavia, Norway, and France.
Late WW2 Germany was definitely suffering from a shotage of aluminum, because importing the bauxite was getting more difficult with the ring of the allies getting closer to Germany from every direction.

That's one of the reasons the late war Me109K, and maybe some Gs, had vertical and horizontal tail surfaces made of wood. Also wooden wings on the He162 and Me163.

 

[tomo pauk]

You do have a point Tomo, but not a vast exaggeration at all. Essentially the degree of education and mechanisation available to the average Soviet citizen was far less than the population of nations such as Western Europe, Britain and the USA between the wars. Russia had a lot of catching up to do to meet similar standards as the West - as their leaders were so fond of reminding the West of how far they had come and that their society was equal to the West - a measure of progress in a growing society is not just how many aircraft factories the country has, or how many ship yards or how big the cities are, but how the poorer members of society are treated/educated and comparatively, with the Soviet Union's vast peasant population that did have its liberties forcefully removed, Soviet society was far worse off.

If we want to compare the Soviet Union with West, the West not being a homogenous in itself produces a major hurdle for the comparation. While UK and USA, along with some smaller richer countries can be stated as well developed parts of the world, we cannot put Spain, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, along with some parts of Germany, Scandinavia into the same class. When we toss in the area between Baltic and Mediterranean, the Soviet Russia does not looks like a bacward nation. I agree that numbers of factories do not equate with nation's prosperity, yet again calling the SU a backward country (in electrification, industrializtion and literacy combo) is wide from the mark.

Not to mention the fact that more Soviet citizens lived in rural areas or were poorer peasants in the cities than there were (relatively) better off city dwellers, so a larger percentage (I don't know what) of the population were poverty stricken than not. As Shortround points out, electrifying the countryside as big as the Soviet Union was a difficult task, all things considered.

Soviets were never rich, I agree wholehartedly. It takes much to propel a country from 17th/18th/19th century into 20th. Electrifying USA, Canada and Australia being also the undaunting task, the 95+% mark was reached maybe in 1960s there?

In rural communities the church provided guidance in many areas, particularly education during Tsarist times, this carried through into Soviet times until Stalin went about denouncing the church. Roaming priests or soothsayers would advise on spiritual matters (Rasputin was supposedly one of these), which had a direct imapct on people's lives, how and when they planted crops etc. With churches and convents being burned to the ground and nuns and priests being either sent to worker's camps or executed, many communities lost hope and so much more.

What communists whave done with Church in SU was a crime. Stating the roaming priests as agricultulary advisers is a little off, isn't it? Since the SU is called as lacking in literacy during interwar period, I'll take it that Church was not providing enough of education during Tsarist times?

Stalin's purges put Soviet military and industrial capability behind the West - his destructive land reform policies crippled the country - hence my claim of the country being backward at that time. He wasn't the only one to do so; Khrushchev also implemented a land reform policy that caused famine in the late 1950s as a result of a drought - he insisted on planting corn - lots of corn on patches of land often unsuitable for the crop. Drought did the rest, also killing off grain production. This led to the Russians doing something completely unexpected - they asked the United States to supply them with grain, which the US did until 1980 when President Carter brought a halt to the practise.

Stalin's purges have indeed put the Soviet military at the bring of collapse, I agree with that. Stating that Stalin's purges, however, have put Soviet industrial capability behind the west implies that, prior late 1930s, Soviet industry was on par with West? The Soviet (mis) management of agriculture caused deaths in thousands in 1920s, no tractors of 1930s were to change that. Land reform was a mean to appropriate land from land owners, happened in all communist countries.
Was it Krutschev, or drought that caused famine in 1950s?

Like Parsifal, I too, have had personal contact with Soviet citizens, one of whom lived in the Stalin era, I've also travelled within post Soviet Russia and although I don't pretend to be an expert on the country, I've learned a lot about it; it's a fascinating place for a Westerner to visit and discover. The food is dreadful though!

Well, Russians (and other people from former SU) are my good costumers

 

[Shortround6]

It is one thing to be a backward (or less advanced?) minor nation. It is another to be a backward world power.

Russia under the Czars was falling behind. The first 10 years of communist "rule" saw not only several years of war but a big slide backwards. "Purges" of not only the rich but the middle class (and educated) crippled the country. By 1926-28 The Communists had to hire western workers/consultants and managers for even such things as the National telegraph system. Even low level managers and supervisors having been killed or driven off in the early 20s. Even the factories/mines/processing plants they did have were operating at a fraction of their 1916/7 capacity. The "collectivization" of agriculture also caused large drops in food produced. The wealthier farmers/land owners (and more knowledgeable) had again been run off or killed. Irrigation systems for some crops allowed to fall into disrepair.
Even low level engineers/draftsmen were in vary short supply.
the 5 year plans used western managers, engineers and supervisors to rebuild and expand a number of Russian industries but as the contracts expired and the westerners left control was turned over to people with only a few years experience, Stalins purges of the late 30s not only took out many military men but many of the more experienced managers and supervisors leaving the new 'crop' of managers and supervisors and engineers that the western trained managers and supervisors and engineers had been training ( a sort of second generation) a 2nd generation as it were but with only 1-3 years experience. The soviets managed to do as well as they did, in part, to the strict standardization the used. From 1928 on they used ONE model of blast furnace in ALL their new steel mills, ONE model of rolling mill in the rolling mills, very few different lathes and so on. While it limited flexibility it lowered demands on engineering resources in designing new equipment, laying out plants, repairs, training workers and so on.

The book I mentioned earlier claims Krutschev was in a large part responsible for the Famine in the 50s. He insisted that corn be planted in ground unsuitable for corn (and perhaps the climate/rainfall not suited for it) and with a drought on top of that you had disaster. Collective farms may very well be a good idea with an economy of resources (machinery and such) but if you get rid of all the more successful (smarter, more knowledgeable) farmers at the same time and let the less intelligent, less knowledgeable farmers try to run the operation you can be in big trouble. Apparently a lot of petty jealousies, feuds and years of resentment governed who wound up in charge more than ability.

Total soviet ability compared to the west looks a bit like a roller coaster from what I am getting so far. Declining (drastically in some cases) from 1917 to about 1928, increasing from 1928 to 1933, a much larger upswing from 1933 to 1938, then a leveling off or decline in some areas from 1938 on or still making progress depending on the area you are talking about and how bad the 1938/39 purges hit that particular area.

Try googling : Blast furnaces in russia 1917

and see what you get. Googling for the title of the book gets to Amazon but not inside the book.

 

[parsifal]

In any event, getting back to the issue of Soviet "cloning" of the B-29. B-29s would have been of very limited value to the Soviets in their "Great Patriotic War" of 1941-5. I suspect they were after an aircraft of the capability of ther B-29 as a quick fix to acquire a viable nuclear delivery system as quickly as possible post war. I dont buy the argument that the Soviets felt or were a "backward nation" that worshipped the ground we walked on. Quite the contrary. They were disdainful of us and our engineering skills, though they realistically wanted to steal as many of our secrets as they could.

Regarding our vaunted superiority in aeronautical engineering, the Soviets appear to be underwhelmed by it. I think it significant that they considered their favourite types to be rather low level types in our own estimation....types like the P-63, P-40 and Hurricane. They did not like the Spitfire. They preferred the A-20 over the B-25. They absolutely loved the DC-3. There is a bit of a pattern there if you think about. all the types they liked were more suited to rough conditions, whereas the types they didnt like were more sophisticated, fragile (to a degree) but less suited (from the Soviet reaction to them) to the conditions that existed on the eastern front.

 

[Shortround6]

. I dont buy the argument that the Soviets felt or were a "backward nation" that worshipped the ground we walked on. Quite the contrary. They were disdainful of us and our engineering skills, though they realistically wanted to steal as many of our secrets as they could.

I was able to get into the first 18 pages of the book mentioned above. After that they want you buy it ( at about $96.00 US dollars for an E-book). Granted it is just one book and one persons point of view but in 1928-1938 they were sure trying to get Western assistance in every major industrial field you could think of from Blast furnaces to open pit copper mines and smelting. They certainly did NOT have to worshiped us but they knew that the ONLY way Russia was going to have a hope of catching up to the west was to licence western designs and hire western engineers and managers to get them on a some what equal footing. American, German, French, English and Italian companies laid out and designed many of the factories and facilities used by the Russians to out produce the Germans. Many other factories and facilities were built later but were essentially copies of the western designed facilities.
The was nothing wrong with the Russian people when it came to brains except that many of their best from 1910-1917 were either dead or left the country. Igor Sikorsky and Alexander Seversky being just two of the "backward" Russians that helped the US aero industry
But that was part of the backwardness, you cannot run off, kill or imprison tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of your best and brightest (or at least your more educated) TWICE in 20 years and not fall in a hole.
There were a number of great minds left but not enough or at least, not enough middle minds to do the grunt work of engineering, a lot of which may be done by computers today. Not coming up with new ideas but implementing them, doing the calculations and doing the thousands of needed drawings.

 

[CobberKane]

Leaving aside where the USSR stood in terms of industrialisation cica WWII, the crown for expertise in mass production certainly sat with the USA. Look at what Packard did with the Merlin. Like wise the B-29, a design which pushed aircraft technology to the limits of the time and required Boeing to create many entirely new production processes. In fact, by some estimates getting the Super-fort into production was the single most expensive undertaking of WWII, costing approximately twice as much as the Manhatten Project. The USSR might have been able to build one copy of the B-29, but that's a long, long way from having the industrial know-how to mass produce it.

 

[tyrodtom]

The USA built almost 4,000 B-29s, the Soviets built 847 Tu-4s. That might qualify it for mass production status.

 

[The Basket]

Copying the B-29 means you have to copy how its made too. Although the B-29 was modern technology, it was a prop in a jet world.The Soviets own MiG-15 saw that right.

The weakness in copying is that you will be always behind the curve. The strengths are that it is easy and cheap as no development is needed. Quick way of getting something operational as the will it/wont it is not issue. Another good example is the K-13 Atoll missile which is a copy of the Sidewinder. Or the Rolls Royce Nene engine....Which the MiG-15 was powered by.

The Soviets did copy but you need the ability to do that and mass produce. That is certainly a sign of a modern industrial power and not people who are backward. One must also remember the US of A licenced RR Spey, Canberra, Harrier and BAe Hawk so copying or licencing or cloning its all good if it gets the goal.

 

[nuuumannn]

Regarding our vaunted superiority in aeronautical engineering, the Soviets appear to be underwhelmed by it.

I don't think anyone is claiming the Russians were lacking in ability or ideas - I think you are reading too much into what I claimed was backward about the USSR, Parsifal; after all, the Polikarpov I-16 was the very first monoplane fighter with retactable undercarriage; it was a fast and feisty little aeroplane for its time; I've spoken with one of the pilots who has flown the restored examples and they all have quite a bit of respect for it; it was a handful. Nevertheless, regardless of what they might have thought about the West, the desire for the Russians to copy Western technology was prevalent throughout the 20s and 30s.

No one states that the Russians themselves are backward, but their society between the wars was. Any society that permits the brutality that Soviet citizens were subjected to under Stalin cannot really be considered anything but backward.

Anyways - moving on, (this is a terrific thread by the way and thank you all for your thoughts) expanding on my thought about the Mossie being replicated by the Germans (okay, let's face it, the whole idea of the Germans actually copying Allied aircraft is a bit far fetched, but that's not in keeping with the spirit of this thread) - it was fast, enormously capable and made of non-strategic material; ideal for replication by a nation at war. Germany was very much in a position industrially to replicate the Mosquito and they had reason for doing so; it p***ed them off!

 

[parsifal]

didnt goring at some stage(s) give his lieutenants a hard time because they didnt have an aircraft like the Mosquito.

The argument that germany didnt need the Mosquito because they had plenty of aluminium is a total crock. The axis never had enough of the stuff, and in any event, why use strategic materials when you can use non-strategic stuff, and emply workers that would otherwise spend the war making pianos and furniture. In any event, if the germans had had a force of Mosquitoes, they could have done a lot....

 

[krieghund]

Copying the B-29 means you have to copy how its made too.

Another hazard in reverse engineering is that you can reproduce it with out realizing what you are copying. The first Tu-4 Bull's produced also copied the original aircraft's ABDR perfectly, the copiers not realizing they were coping repaired structual components as well. Sort off....."I don't care what it looks like, copy it! It's there for a reason."

 

[tyrodtom]

Another hazard in reverse engineering is that you can reproduce it with out realizing what you are copying. The first Tu-4 Bull's produced also copied the original aircraft's ABDR perfectly, the copiers not realizing they were coping repaired structual components as well. Sort off....."I don't care what it looks like, copy it! It's there for a reason."

These people was living in a period of Russian history where you risk going to the Gulag if you were the among the first to quit clapping at Stalin's speeches, one, too many times. Where a section of Lubykana prison was for jokers, people who told inappropiate jokes.

When Stalin told you to copy something, you copied it.