I wasn't referring to the USSR. Had I wanted to refer to the USSR, I would have typed "USSR". My point is that the West doesn't have a monopoly on great ideas and innovation. The existing Russian (and others) state is not a conglomerate of incompetence, and has plenty of advanced engineering feats under her belt.
I am suggesting it is not just disingenuous, but unwise to be so dismissive of Russian capabilities, especially when the geopolitical atmospher is the way it is right now.
Majority of main advances came from cooperation and how education, science and engineering was organised and funded. So all achievements are Soviet achievements, not Russian/Ukrainian/Georgian/etc, saying otherwise has been a common political tool of nationalist in all post-ussr countries.
Yes this is the point I was making. Although, I wouldn't try to say "this was a Ukrainian achievement" – I still think you should lump most of them together as "Soviet" achievements. But calling them Russian seems just as misguided as calling them Ukrainian.
A lot of that depended on contributions from the Baltic countries, Ukraine, and minorities within Russia like the Russian Jews and Germans. Many of the latter have been leaving Russia in droves since the 1980s.
It's remarkable how post-soviet states are quickly forgetting that many of them (Baltics, Georgia, and Ukraine in particular) built the majority of their currently existing heavy industries and civilian infrastructure due to their placement in the highest supply category (out of three other less fortunate categories [1]) under USSR's planned economy. For years the the entire union had been allocating its resources and the best work labour to these regions, in strong accordance to the priorities defined by Politburo.
