A fun bit of history I learned from a retired Soviet Analyst...My analyst friend learned of this years later from his Russian counterpart, after finally being allowed to visit the country he had studied for so long so I'm guessing it's pretty accurate.<p>Sometime in the 80's, the Soviets brought in some Japanese industrial consultants as part of a modernization push for Soviet factories -- they had started to become aware that the sophistication of their industrial capabilities had more or less stagnated somewhere in the 1940's or 50's. Feeling pressure from an increasingly sophisticated U.S. and Europe, they wanted to know what it would take to catch up with the Japanese, then widely considered to have the best, most sophisticated manufacturing processes in the world.<p>The consultants came and toured some of the major manufacturing cities and facilities, taking notes, interviewing workers and managers, testing final output and raw materials quality, crunching numbers, analyzing the supply chain, that sort of thing. Finally they met with the Soviet leadership in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg), home of some of the major industrial capacity of the Union.<p>After reviewing the findings for several hours, one of the Soviets, impatient with all the details finally spoke up, "yes yes yes...we know all this...what we want to know is, how long will it take, if we put all of our national resources behind it (meaning, a space race level effort), for us to catch up with the Japanese?"<p>Their reply?<p>"Forever"<p>Their analysis revealed that the systemic and social issues in the Soviet Union (as well as a combination of material resources and other odds and ends) were so bad, that no matter how much effort the Soviets put into upgrading their manufacturing processes, and no matter how long they put that effort forward, the Japanese would always be ahead.<p>The consultants were quickly rushed out of the country and the study was never spoken of again.<p>Within the decade, the Union had fallen and it was all a moot point anyway.