Reply to post: Re: Re:The simple fact is (@ pseudonymous blowhard)

Ex-Soviet engines fingered after Antares ROCKET launch BLAST

Mephistro

Re: Re:The simple fact is (@ pseudonymous blowhard)

"the idea that pre-Soviet Russia was at a "middle-ages-level" of development isn't correct."

It's, depending of how you define 'development'. From the top of my head, ~90% of the Russian population back then consisted in peasants living as serfs in a feudal system, which is exactly what Russia was until Red October.

Tsiolkovsky was a very lucky man, for having the education and the wealth to pursue his interests in a country where famines and disease killed routinely hundreds of thousands or even millions of people, and almost everybody lived in homes without sanitation or running water.

Some of the punishments the Russian people had to suffer to attain these goals -e.g. massive deportations to Siberia to provide workers to the area- were terrible and my post doesn't condone the Russian Governments of the era for such acts.

But regarding 'development', there were shitloads of it.

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