Difficult times produce strong people.

Strong people create good times.

Good times produce weak people.

Weak people create difficult times.

Plato, 380 BC

I’ve been thinking about the technological miracle of the USSR in the 1930s, which occurred after the Bolsheviks took power in 1917, when the country committed intellectual suicide. Almost the entire scientific and technical elite was either exterminated, sent to camps, or emigrated. Scientific and technical specialists have almost completely disappeared from the country. The USSR’s response is relevant to the H-1B debate going on today.

After the Revolution, Russia’s industrial infrastructure was destroyed. Even by the most conservative estimates, it would take at least two generations or about half a century of normal human life to make up for all these colossal losses. The USSR, however, had neither time nor normal conditions. But then, there was a miracle: In only 10 years (1930-1940), the USSR’s technological and scientific sector was not only fully restored but, in many respects, surpassed the European level. For example, at the beginning of the war with Germany in 1941, the USSR had significantly more tanks and aircraft than the Germans, even though there had been no tank or aircraft industry in the USSR some 12 years before!

There is a true saying that “There’s no substitute for experience.” No matter how much you learn from books, no matter how much you copy what’s being made in other countries, and no matter how much you steal someone else’s technology, you can’t produce quality goods until........

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