Soviet science

[thoughtcrime]

GaAs solar cells were used in the Soviet "Venera" mission (where they transmitted signals from the surface of Venus, and were the only ones to do so), and also heterojunction cells were used in the "Mir" space station. The Lunokhod rover also managed to set records for travelling the most distances on the Moon. V.V. Beletsky is a good source for spacecraft tether systems, and he has a good pop science book "Essays on the Motion of Celestial Bodies" ( https://books.google.com/books?id=byWZusmVSecC ).



KAM (Kolmogorov-Arnold-Moser) theory is used for finding fuel-efficient orbits in spaceflight, and one example of this is Belbruno's use of KAM theory to recover the Japanese spacecraft Hiten that was stranded without enough fuel ( http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7687.html ). There is also a paper on the lunar capture problem by Qi and Xu ( http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10569-014-9582-3#/page-1 ).





Soviet military art in the old DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) website (see the galleries under "collections"):



https://web.archive.org/web/20110720061235/http://www.dia.mil/history/military-art/





These were used in the old series "Soviet Military Power" (partly outdated), available on FAS.org:



http://fas.org/irp/dia/product/smp_index.htm





Declassified CIA studies of the Typhoon submarine and WIG craft:



http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_conversions/89801/DOC_0000499611.pdf



http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_conversions/89801/DOC_0000498655.pdf





This is a general NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) study, "The Future of Soviet Science":



http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_conversions/89801/DOC_0000261291.pdf





This is a much older study, in 1959:



http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_conversions/89801/DOC_0000273186.pdf





A good technical report on Soviet optoelectronics (includes information on epitaxial growth techniques):



http://www.osti.gov/scitech/biblio/7162354





Here's a short excerpt from Sasgen's book that I mentioned in the previous post:



"Paradoxically, despite their lagging behind the United States in sonar, quieting, and other technologies vital to submarine performance (problems with steam generators and deadly radiation leaks took them years to solve), the Soviets made impressive advances. On the high end of the scale, they were ahead of the United States in areas of communications, metallurgy, and reactor and hull design. For exampe, they built a submarine capable of diving to more than three thousand feet, a depth no U.S. combat submarine has ever reached. Yet on the low end, they couldn't solve problems with construction and maintenance."





I guess he's referring to the fact that submarine noise can come from places like the rotating machinery and the propellers. He or some other source mentions the fact that US submarines were "quieter" primarily because of Japanese milling machines used to produce the propellers. Soviets did make important advances in underwater acoustics and quieting throughout the decades, and developed features like hydrodynamic control around a submarine: these are detailed in Godin and Palmer ( https://www.amazon.com/History-Russian-Underwater-Acoustics-Godin/dp/9812568255/ ), and Polmar's books on submarines ( https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=norman+polmar+soviet ).





Another good source (apart from "Cassidy's Run" is Goliszek's "In the Name of Science" ( https://www.amazon.com/Name-Science-Programs-Research-Experimentation/dp/0312303564 ), and here is an excerpt, on the result of American disinformation campaigns similar to SDI:



"Following World War II, both the United States and the Soviet Union used German and Japanese research to improve their own chemical weapons programs. However, in an effort to disrupt the Soviet program, the United States began a disinformation campaign to convince the Kremlin that it had achieved far greater chemical weapons successes than it really had, especially in developing a super nerve gas called GJ. Rather than disrupting it, the deception produced the opposite effect.



The Soviet Union's intense efforts to keep up with the West led to the development of several new agents that were not technically banned by the CWC because they were binary (benign when kept separate but lethal when combined). While denouncing U.S. research on binary chemicals, the Soviets were pouring vast resources into developing their own. The agents went by the code names Substance 33, A-230, A-232, A-234, Novichok 5, and Novichok 7. Most of them were at least as toxic as the nerve agent VX and some purportedly ten times as toxic. For instance, A-232 is so lethal that a microscopic amount can kill a person. Vladimir Uglev, the Russian scientist who personally developed A-232, revealed its existence in an interview with the magazine *Novoye Vremya* in 1994 and admitted that it was specifically developed to circumvent the CWC."





Other good sources on "Novichok" and bioweapons include old articles by Polmar, Garthoff and others in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. One of them is the article "Polyakov's Run", still available in the Wayback Machine ( https://web.archive.org/web/20050420174847/http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=so00garthoff ).

[thoughtcrime]

To get an idea of how limited Western knowledge (including intelligence agencies) was of Soviet high technology sectors, one is advised to read: "On Thermonuclear War" by Herman Kahn, the Yale study "The Technological Level of Soviet Industry" (1977), and RAND studies by A.J. Alexander (these are commonly cited, say by Holloway's article in the Yale study), and finally Garthoff's treatise "Detente and Confrontation" which is based on disinformation like the "Great Soviet Encyclopedia". Also there is the most comprehensive NIE study, declassified here (this also double-counts some American leads, that heavily overlap with microelectronics):



http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_conversions/89801/DOC_0000261310.pdf



These huge gaps were not rectified by subsequent historians, since historians still depend on those old outdated sources (including older NIE studies). For example, Odom's "The Collapse of the Soviet Military" is filled with claims of alleged Soviets lags in highly complex technology areas, like heavy lift vehicles and such.



Broader studies on entire sectors would include: Gunston's book "The Osprey Encyclopedia of Russian Aircraft", Norman Polmar's books on submarines mentioned above, Godin and Palmer, the book "History of Computing Devices in Russia" by Trogemann, Ernt and Nitussov on Russian military computing architectures ( https://books.google.com/books?id=FFDvJTO9leIC ), the 7-volume "Russia's Arms Catalog" which was reviewed favorably by Polmar in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists ( http://www.worldcat.org/title/russias-arms-catalog-1996-1997-volume-5-air-defense/oclc/38164883 ), and Galushkin's book on neural nets ( https://www.amazon.com/Neural-Networks-Theory-Alexander-Galushkin/dp/3642080065/ ). Neural net computers were used for automatic navigation systems in "Buran" and other spacecraft. The USNI database is the best all-around source for weapons systems if you can get access to it, and is cited by Friedman and Friedman's "The Future of War" in the chapter on Soviet anti-ship missiles. On Soviet advances in materials there is the Springer series "Soviet Advanced Composites Technology" ( http://link.springer.com/bookseries/10286 ) , "Metal and Ceramic Based Composites" by Mileiko, and "Titanium Alloys" by Moiseyev. On Soviet optimization you have (apart from Zauberman) Elliot R. Leiberman's old study ( https://books.google.com/books?id=jC6jBQAAQBAJ ), that cites Ilya Sobol's work on quasi-Monte Carlo methods, and also mentions Glushkov's DISPLAN. The Soviet journal "Cybernetics and Systems Analysis" is available in Springer, and key articles are by Glushkov ( http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01078504?LI=true#page-1 ), Mikhalevich, Ermoliev, Sergienko, and others. There is Polyak's article "History of Mathematical Programming in the USSR" ( http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s101070100258#page-1 ). Another good source on Soviet computing is Boris Babaian ( http://www.thocp.net/biographies/babaian_boris.htm ). For more aerospace material, Alexander Nebylov has information including WIG craft ( https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&hl=en&q=alexander+nebylov+soviet ). For the space program many sources are available, including Brian Harvey, Hendrickx (on Energia-Buran), Asif Siddiqi, Martin Turner.



There are some people who are descendants of Soviet work, like Alexander A. Stepanov ( https://interviews.slashdot.org/story/15/01/19/159242/interviews-alexander-stepanov-and-daniel-e-rose-answer-your-questions ) ( http://www.amazon.com/Alexander-A.-Stepanov/e/B001KDNNOG/ ). Despite the lag in traditional microelectronics, Soviets had advanced results in submicron lithography based on optics, including the work of M.A. Kumakhov ( http://proceedings.spiedigitallibrary.org/proceeding.aspx?articleid=996533 ).



There are also random unique Soviet projects, like the "Ruza" phased-array antenna which was used for space tracking. Information on this is in the book "History of Wireless" ( https://books.google.com/books?id=NBLEAA6QKYkC ).

[Alfa]

Translations of Russian work on probability and statistics.. quite interesting, check the Download section



http://www.sheynin.de

[pj]

Surprisingly the site http://www.sheynin.de

is quite legit Cool

[Alfa]

I found it by following work of Vladimir Vovk who I guess might've been born/studied in SSSR..



http://www.vovk.net/

http://www.probabilityandfinance.com/history.html

[Tradenator]

Half Life: The Divided Life of Bruno Pontecorvo, Physicist or Spy by Frank Close



I read this earlier in the year and thought it was pretty good.

[Alfa]

Neural networks based on Tselin automata from Norway researchers - seems to receive negative reviews but seems to be based on Soviet 60's research..



https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.01508



https://cair.uia.no/milestones-and-discoveries/the-tsetlin-machine-outperforms-neural-networks/



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsetlin_machine



https://github.com/cair/TsetlinMachine

https://github.com/cair/fast-tsetlin-machine-with-mnist-demo

[nikol]

interesting.



negative dies out naturally with natural selection