Trojan Horse Caused A Siberian Explosion

An anonymous reader writes "William Safire of the nytimes [nytimes.com] has an interesting column this week describing how the Soviets purchased bogus computer chips from the West in the 1970's. These chips caused what "was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space." Fascinating story."

Pentium I bug.

[DarkHelmet]

describing how the Soviets purchased bogus computer chips from the West in the 1970's

For some reason, I can equally imagine something like this happen from the Pentium I FDIV bug, can't you? :)

Re:Pentium I bug.

[TwistedGreen]

Though the article doesn't actually mention bogus computer chips... it talked about software stolen by the KGB which was altered with deliberate flaws, causing their oil pipeline to malfunction and explode.

I wonder if the editor RTFA.

Re:Pentium I bug.

[loserMcloser]

Did you RTFA?

Straight from the article:
The catch: computer chips would be designed to pass Soviet quality tests and then to fail in operation.

While the main anecdote of the article is about bogus software, computer chips are mentioned.

Re:Pentium I bug.

[ncc74656]

Back in the early 80's I remember DEC had reported that a couple of their VAXs somehow shoed up in the USSR.

kremvax [astrian.net] was an April Fool's joke.

Re:Pentium I bug.

[the gnat]

Yes, but there's also a famous VAX chip that had printed on it in Russian "VAX - when you care enough to steal the very best" [fsu.edu]. Apparently the DEC engineers had a sense of humor about international industrial espionage.

Re:Pentium I bug.

[Zeinfeld]

Safire sometimes just makes things up. Like the bit about 9-11 hijackers having the transponder codes for Air Force One.

No, Safire did not make that up, he was fed it by the Whitehouse and was gullible enough to print it rather than say what a crock. The Whitehouse story that the Whitehouse was threatened by a nuke was meant to cover the bad press Bush got for his panicked jetting arround the country aimlessly on airforce one.

There is a connection, the CIA obviously fed Safire this story in response to the pre-announcement over the weekend that there would be an 'investigation' into intelligence failures that led to the invasion of Iraq. The 'investigation' will not of course cover the intelligence that really failed, or rather was non existent - Bush himself.

So this little tidbit has been fed to Safire by the CIA to keep up their end of things. Unfortunately it is pretty difficult to work out what went on because the details are clearly contradictory. A trojan planted in the chips could not possibly lead to the failure of the pipeline, it is too low level. You would have to know about the design of the pipeline software in advance for that to work, and that is clearly impossible since not even the Russians would write software before they had the machine...

I suspect that the story is nothing more than repeated agency gossip. Lots of things used to blow up in the USSR, believe me they needed no help from the West to make shoddy equipment. Nothing in the damn place worked. Whenever something went wrong there would be some idiot hawk making some stupid claim that some scheme was responsible. None of them were very likely.

Deliberately blowing up a civilian pipe-line makes no sense, it would be an act of terrorism that the USSR could and would easily retaliate for. Blowing up a pipeline this way would be very risky, the soviets would certainly hold an enquiry and the chances are that the source would be identified.

Safire mentions the fact he was in the Nixon administration, and yes they did do a lot of bizare things that almost always turned out baddly. They replaced the democratic government of Chile with a thug who murdered at least 40,000 people in the first five years of his dictatorship. Guess what, the US is not trusted or very popular in Chile today. Nixon also got involved in a whole series of proxy wars against the Soviets, but when push came to shove they were very reluctant to actually face off against them directly.

Safire does admit that the Siberian piepline was financed by the UK and Germany. The chances that the US could pull off an action like this against UK interests are pretty slight, if you have ever been to NSA or GCHQ headquarters you will know exactly why.

The idea of Reagan collaborating with the French against Thatcher, just think about it for a moment. And that is before you remember that from 1976 to 1980 Jimmy Carter was in charge and the bulk of this covert operation is hypothesized to have taken place on his watch. Carter spent most of his time dealing with the consequences of CIA schemes that had gone baddly wrong. He lost the 1980 election because the CIA had thought it a great idea to replace the democracy in Iran with a dictator who the people hated and kicked out twenty years later.

The fact is that the CIA has been a collosal failure. It has consistently failed to provide the US with the intelligence it needed and it has meddled incompetently in other countries affairs, almost always causing a backfire. All the intelligence successes of the US have come from satelite and communications intelligence.

So no, Safire is not making this up, he is just repeating stories that anyone with the inside knowledge he claims would know are false. The fact is that speechwriters like Safire was are pretty minor functionaries.

Re:Pentium I bug.

[EvilTwinSkippy]

The only account of a pipeline explosion of that magnetude in the Soviet era was here [nobombs.net]. It's basically FOAF, take it for what it's worth, but basically the explosion was caused by a leak. Instead of turning the pipeline off and finding the leak, the operators did a typical Soviet era solution to the problem: increase the gas flow to compensate for the drop in pressure.

The explosion itself was set off by a passing passenger train. Killing 190, injuring 700.

Re:Pentium I bug.

[Zeinfeld]

maybe if you'd RTFA you'd realize they stole the software, which eventually caused the explosion... Nice try though.

The article makes no sense, it talks about software and chips interchangeably as if they are the same thing. I was simply putting the most credible interpretation on the garbled account Safire gives. It is crystal clear he has no idea what he is talking about, I suspect that neither has his source.

It is now well established that the Soviets had a mole at Intel who stole tapes containing chip 'masters' at that time. So it is credible that 'software' could mean chips as Safire refers to them.

OK lets try your version: Steal the 'software' for a pipeline? Exactly where would you get that in 1982? You can't get that type of thing off the shelf even today, the best you do is to get a package that you customize.

Back in 1982 you practically had to write your own device drivers, I had to rewrite several of the ones I used. The type of generic software that controls systens at a high level simply did not exist as a package in those days, it was exclusively written as bespoke. Second, software to control pipelines would not have been export controlled, the Soviets would not go to the expense of stealing what they could buy outright quite easily.

BP and the British govt were investors in the pipeline. BP run quite a lot of pipelines, they would almost certainly use something based on their own in-house code. The idea that BP would instead use something that the KGB stole off the US is somewhat wierd.

Re:Pentium I bug.

[rutledjw]

I fail to see how this has ANYTHING to do with Republicans, except that Regan was present at the time.

Further, there are plenty of technical details that are "glossed over", but this is hardly suprising given that the writer is not technical. For the rest, you're making TONS of assumptions for which you simply don't have the information.

These chips didn't have to be CPUs, they could have merely been ROM chips. Remember your old design classes (yeah, it's been a while for me as well, but...)? In that manner you want it to function and give correct results nearly %100 of the time (to pass testing), but give wildly WRONG answers when a certian condition is hit. Not hard to do. With that in mind, they didn't need cutting edge technology like their VAX clone.

Therefore, the situation being described is VERY possible and even probable.

Sure you can bring the system down, but not in a predictable way.

EXACTLY my point! If anything, the author described a process which he thought was much more elegant and sophicticated than it really was. Chances are, this Gus Weiss fellow was as suprised as anyone else at the magnitude of the blast.

Finally, the CIA would have no way of knowing that their goosed up control system would not have found its way into a nuclear plant.

The article said we knew they were buying tech for this project from a certian Canadian company. From that it would appear we had pretty good info regarding where this was going.

Re:Pentium I bug.

[rutledjw]

I'm not trying to be rude, but I don't think you understand how these things work. ROM doesn't need a CPU. It's a series of output based on input. We're talking basic transistor-based gates, nothing more. There isn't "code" like you're describing. Granted, the author is confused here as well.

The Soviets were not stealing to simply copy blind, they were stealing to learn the technology. The US had to expect that every line of code they gave would be reverse engineered and disassembled.

There's no code, they would have to examine every single transistor -OR- they perform testing to ensure the chip produced the correct output for a given input. We had to hope they missed the exception condition, which they apparently did.

I don't care what the alleged technology is, there was no technology available at the time that was complex enough to hide a trojan in and expect it not to be found.

I'm sorry, but this simply isn't correct. You're making this MUCH more complicated than it was, it wasn't as complex as "trojan horses" we see today. But it was a "trojan" in that it appeared to have one function when there was a hidden, malicious sub-function being hidden.

It would be a pretty easy matter to hide a trojan in Windows NT or Linux today.

Agreed, AND we could have had MUCH better control over the results. BTW, I'm NOT trying to be combative (as in typical /. style, which I fall victim to myself sometimes), I merely want to point out what was described very definately could have been (and seemingly was) done given the tech available. It's much more "basic" than they author describes, but roughly accurate...

Re:Pentium I bug.

[Ooblek]

Soviets are pretty well-known for not being as through or careful as those in the US are before implementing technology. Though I can't point to a specific article, I can recall seeing several where NASA dislikes their QA process because it pretty much doesn't exist.

As far as your time tables are concerned, you are using the same source of this story - the news media and government (which you appear to disbelieve) - for the fact that the Soviets were 5 years behind us technologically. Sure, I'd believe that overall, life was not as modern in USSR as it was in the USA at the time. However, is it not remotely possible that at least a handful of people had access to more up-to-date western technology?

And finally, since your sig suggests you just have a problem with the government in general, what makes you think the CIA even thought of the negative consequences of leaving "sleeper" chips out in the open for the KGB to grab? Maybe they assumed the Soviets were behind in technology 5 years and didn't think they had anything to control like what they used the chips to control. What makes you think they planted chips to cause an explosion? More likely, they planted the chips to cause the slowdown of development of some technology, and the unintended result was an explosion.

Where in this whole thread do Republicans come into play? Or, were you just reaching to make some sort of over-generalization? Or maybe you just call everyone that has a differing opinion a republican, kinda like a swear word?

Re:Pentium I bug.

[Slashamatic]

Ok, I worked at the company that produced the telemetry and control system for the trans-sib pipeline in 79. The telemetry subsystems used MC6800s and I think they couldn't use PDP11s because they would have been export embargoed. They had their own computer but it was primitive. Compressed-air systems may have worked for plants, but for pipelines forget it. The networking was plain horrible. Effectively raw HDLC.

There were EPROMS with software on in the telemetry boards but they didn't have the control software. Hell, there was no control automation, all the kit did was to report on instruments, collect operator adjustments and send them to actuators.

As for the VAX 11/780, actually thanks to VMS it could give about 20 people some degree of word-processing, so a little better than the PC even though smaller and slower. I later at a chemical company used VAXen to run above the basic PDP-11 based telemetry systems to provide plant-level supervision.

The usual with a hot-standby system was that both would be active and one would follow the state of the other (we did something similar for the telemtry system). There would have been two PSUs definitely.

Re:Chile corrections

[Zeinfeld]

No, the Allende government was not democratic. By this time, they had outlawed opposition political parties. Also, you exagerate by a factor of 10. Pinochet's execution toll was more like 4,000. A lot less than the bloodbath and purges Allende and the USSR had planned.

I'm not surprised that you pump out this type of appology for fascism as AC. No, Pinochet did not 'execute', he had people murdered. There were 4,000 murdered during the coup alone. The figure of 40,000 is well established.

But lets imagine for a moment that he 'only' murdered 4,000. Was the Nixon administration justified in putting a murderer into power?

There is of course no evidence whatsoever for the claim that Allende was not elected by the people or that he planned any form of coup. Of course there are a lot of people who will make these claims to try to justify the coup, but they have no more substance than allegations that Saddam had WMD "that are ready for use within 45 minutes" as Tony Blair claimed.

Similar is true of the fascist Mossadegh. The Shah held off the advent of the much worse Khomeini reign of terror.

Mossadegh was no fascist, he was a nationalist whose 'crime' in the eyes of Eisenhower and Churchill was to insist that BP pay a fair price for the oil they took. Operation Ajax was justified to Eisenhower by claims made by the Dulles brothers that the USSR was plotting an invasion through the North. The fact that Stalin died before operation Ajax was not allowed to affect this analysis.

Justifying operation Ajax by what followed is ridiculous. The mullahs could not have taken over if Mossadegh had not been replaced by the Shah. The mullahs are the result of operation Ajax, not a justification for it. Next you will be claiming that the Versailles treaty should have imposed harsher conditions on Germany to prevent the rise of Hitler.

This happened only rarely. The CIA overall has been quite successful.

There actions have backfired far more frequently than they have succeeded. Noriega and Saddam were both CIA proteges, Pinochet, the Shah of Iran were installed in CIA led coups. Meddling in Guatelmala, Honduras, Nicaragua led to civil wars. And those are just the cases where the CIA were the principal actors.

The record of the CIA is by any objective standard a failure. The problem with the macho posturing they engage in is that you have to have brains and a strategy for realpolitique. The CIA strategy has been to prefer a strong man they feel they can control no matter how repressive and corrupt. This strategy fails because the strongmen who can be controlled can rarely control their own populations who depose them and the strongmen who can control their populations tend to refuse to be controlled themselves. Iraq and Iran show both modes of falure of the CIA strategy.

Re:Chile dawgs.

[Zeinfeld]

He certainly was a fascist. He annexed the oil fields to his personal control.

Mosadegh nationalized the oil fields after Anglo-Persian refused to allow him to even have the books audited. It was well known that the Iranians were being cheated of the megre share they were allowed of the oil revenues. Even the US administration thought that Anglo-Persian had brought the crisis on themselves. Had they offered a 50:50 split they would have kept their place.

No, they were not. The Shah, secular whatever his faults, kept their power down.

The installation of the shah as dictator was never going to be very stable for very long. The Shah was only the second of his line, his father had replaced the previous monarchy only 40 years earlier. The way the Shah was installed meant that he would never be seen as anything more than a foreign puppet and his eventual fall was inevitable. It was highly unlikely that the mullahs would ever have gained control if operation Ajax had never taken place.

What are you smoking? Saddam's involvement with the CIA was brief, and long after he put himself in power.

Saddam came to power in a party coup with US support. The CIA provided him with lists of opponents to liquidate. The US supported Saddam from the very beginning of his rule, all the way through to the invasion of Kewait. Even that would have been allowed if he had only kept the northern oil fields where the Kewaitis had been under-drilling Iraq's oil fields which was the original agreement.

Iran did have CIA involvement. However, Saddam put himself in power, and the CIA only helped him (along with many others) during a brief part of his long reign.

The CIA was mucking about in Iraqi politics ever since the British left.

Google Link

[Anonymous Coward]

For the tin foil hat crowd, here is a register free link: The Story [nytimes.com]

Re:Google Link

[antime]

Why not use the Slashot partner link [nytimes.com] when they are kind enough to provide one?

You know it.

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, computer blows up you !

Re:You know it.

[wed128]

OH MY GOD!!
that's the first time that joke ever made sense!!!

Oh

[arvindn]

For a moment I thought you were talking about the recent explosion in Trojan Horses coming from Siberia (ok so its not exactly a trojan and its Russia not Siberia but what the hell ;^)

Re:Oh

[ScottGant]

At first I was thinking it was the big Siberian blast that they said was a comet at the turn of the last century.

Now THAT would have been a hell of a Trojan Horse.

Meanwhile in Russia

[after]

I rememeber that Russia once developed a base-3 computer called ``Trinity''. I cant find a link on it, but I know that it worked. I cannot imagine how logical operations would work on sutch a thing though.

Re:Meanwhile in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

• I rememeber that Russia once developed a base-3 computer called ``Trinity''. I cant find a link on it, but I know that it worked. I cannot imagine how logical operations would work on sutch a thing though.

Rock.

Scissors.

Paper.

Re:Meanwhile in Russia

[richie2000]

I rememeber that Russia once developed a base-3 computer called ``Trinity''. I cant find a link on it, but I know that it worked. I cannot imagine how logical operations would work on such a thing though.

Easy, just add a new boolean named "maybe".

Re:Meanwhile in Russia

[saforrest]

I cannot imagine how logical operations would work on sutch a thing though.

Sigh. This is Slashdot, so I guess you've never heard of ternary logic [wikipedia.org], eh?

Re:Meanwhile in Russia

[saforrest]

A brief explanation of ternary logic for those who don't want to bother reading my link.

In addition to TRUE and FALSE, you have another state, which represents "I don't know". It's conventionally called FAIL (well, at least it is in Maple).

How do the truth tables work? The basic idea is that if you have a function f(x) where x is TRUE or FALSE, then you can define f for FAIL with this rule:

IF f(TRUE) = f(FALSE) THEN
f(FAIL) := f(TRUE)
ELSE
f(FAIL) := FAIL
END IF

So this means you have TRUE AND FAIL = FAIL, but TRUE OR FAIL = TRUE (because TRUE OR TRUE = TRUE OR FALSE = TRUE).

Converting ternary logic to arithmetic modulo 3 is a little more complicated, but once when I was bored I worked out the rules for myself [forrest.cx].

Re:Meanwhile in Russia

[saforrest]

I'm sure there are plenty of entirely academic and impractical fields of study that you've never heard of, Stephen, but we won't go into that.

I'm sure there are. Ternary logic, though, is neither academic nor impractical.

I guess my reply did come off as a bit condescending, though. Sorry about that.

Re:Meanwhile in Russia

[AlaskanUnderachiever]

Really it's fairly simple. I seem to recall from some basic classes that the reason behind a base-2 system is because an on/off state is a LOT more reliable than anything else.

Because voltage levels tend to drift a bit (especially with time and erosion) a system that's set up to read as either one state or another has quite a bit more built in tolerance for drift than one that's built to sense more than two states. It's been a LONG ass time since I took any compsci however so I'm probably missing a few things. Basically what I'm saying is that it's not only possible, such a system "could" be faster and more compact but it would also be horribly prone to errors in the long run.

Re:Meanwhile in Russia

[SEWilco]

I cannot imagine how logical operations would work on such a thing though.

Trinity: "Most guys can't."

Re:Meanwhile in Russia

[jejones]

That would be Setun [icfcst.kiev.ua]. (I'm not up on Russian, so that may well be Russian for "trinity.")

Nice story but...

[Anonymous Coward]

It just makes for too nice a story. Why should we believe it?

Re:Nice story but...

[the_mad_poster]

Because it's in the NYT [salon.com], of course!

awesome

[hellmarch]

this story has everything. technology, spies, massive explosions, and high ranking government officials dying. it doesn't get much better than this.

Re:awesome

[the real darkskye]

Can't get much better?
What about the naked chicks?
What about the beer?

Or Naked Chicks bringing chips and beer!

Chicks, chips and beer, Monday just became more tollerable.

Re:awesome

[DjMd]

COMING THIS SUMMER....

Naration by 6hz-Man
In a place were the land is always cold

Against an enemy who would stop at nothing

(evil soviet general) We will take their Technology and give them our Oil

(evil soviet underlings) Da Commrad!

(6-hz voice over)but one man

(computer nerd, (but surprisingly good looking once you take off the glasses)) My God, we can only have once chance1

(6-hz) and one spunky little chip

(inside of computer) Beep!

(6-hz at double voulme) COLD FIRE

Dramatic music

This film has not been rated (but oviously R for extranious sex scene between comp nerd and hot female KGB defector)

Starring Orlando Bloom as nerd

Re:awesome

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Yeah, except verifiable sources. Note this was in the opinion section of the Times. I haven't been able to find a shred about this event anywhere. (Though I'm still looking.)

Their Revenge

[MiniMike]

They must have planted an agent inside Microsoft...

Let me get this straight....

[wwwrench]

Now is a time to remember that sometimes our spooks get it right in a big way.

Let's get this straight - Safire is bragging about the Americans blowing up gas pipelines???? I thought that was terrorism, at least if it is in Iraq. Lucky many weren't killed.

Re:Let me get this straight....

[andy1307]

Safire is bragging about the Americans blowing up gas pipelines

Did you even RTFA? The Americans didn't blow up anything. The Soviets bought computer chips and used them to control the operations of the pipeline.

Re:Let me get this straight....

[autophile]

Did you even RTFA? The Americans didn't blow up anything. The Soviets bought computer chips and used them to control the operations of the pipeline.

My turn...

Did you even RTFA? The Soviets stole Canadian software to control the operations of the pipeline. The Americans added a trojan horse to the software.

Not Exactly...

[virg_mattes]

> The Soviets stole Canadian software to control the operations of the pipeline. The Americans added a trojan horse to the software.

Not precisely true. The Americans sold technology to the Canadians, but wouldn't sell it to the Soviets. Soviet agents posed as Canadian defense contractors to get purchasing rights. The Americans knew they were doing it, and fed poisoned devices to those agents. The agents took the tech home to Russia and BOOM!

Virg

Re:Let me get this straight....

[bigman2003]

It's like the security tags on clothing. Try to steal something, and the ink packet will explode- destroying the clothes.

The store doesn't actually do it- it is the thief that is responsible.

We didn't sell the chips to the Russians, they were able to get them through 'less than honest' means. We did not put them in their hands and say 'use this'.

When I was in high school, one of my friends found his dads stash of pot. We took from it pretty liberally. I always laughed when I thought about him confronting us- "did you steal my marijuana?"

Re:Let me get this straight....

[Dr. Smeegee]

*sigh* Just remembering the sound ass-beating I got for exactly the same logic. NEVER dip into a man's stash, son.

Re:Let me get this straight....

[tunabomber]

This is actually similar to the kind of tricks that Israeli intelligence would play on Palestinian militants. The militants would buy their weaponry from Israeli gangsters, who most likely would have stolen it from the IDF. So, pretty soon Mossad was posing as criminals and selling booby-trapped bullets to Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The bullets would explode violently when fired, destroying the gun and possibly injuring its owner. It took a while for the guerillas to figure out how to check the bullets to make sure they are real, working ammo.
Also, Mossad would occasionally find ways to sell cell phones to their enemies- except the phones would be packed with explosive, so all you had to do was call the phone and start a conversation to make sure the person who you are after is the one holding the phone, then press a special combination of keys- and BOOOM.

Re:Let me get this straight....

[sjames]

Essentially, terrorism is a Newspeak word. The same activity for the same purpose is only 'terrorism' if you're not on the U.S. government's 'good boy' list.

Thus, blowing up two buildings in New York is terrorism. Blowing up a whole country is 'a war for freedom and democracy'.

The only difference between the perpitrators of the acts is that one is done by a 'recognized' government and the other is not.

Note that there is a non newspeak definition that distinguishes terrorism from act of war as well. Terrorism is when the attacks are specifically targeted at creating a state of terror in a civilian population for political ends.

That definition is not favored by recognized governments as it provides them with no means to use terrorism while villifying others for doing the same.

Note that by the second definition, some in the U.S. government are guilty of terrorism against the citizens of th U.S.

Re:Let me get this straight....

[DavidBrown]

You don't get it. The EULA disclaimed all liability, and the Soviets who installed the software accepted the EULA when they removed the plastic wrapping from the box. It's not our fault.

Re:Let me get this straight....

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

temper, temper

If this story is true, the Soviets bought the stuff in Canada. The chips were under an embargo so they could not buy them in the States legitimally.

fwiw, the pipeline was built and the world did not come to an end. Reagan also placed some restrictions on what US firms could sell to Europeans, something that led directly to the EU taking steps to become independent of US suppliers so that sort of thing can not happen again. I always got the impression that Airbus Industries were given more of a kick-start than they otherwise would have got for that reason. Airbus is now bigger than Boeing.

actually, the story sounds like a load of bull. Quite apart from anything else, it implies that French security sources exposed a valuable source to Mitterand who then exposed him to Reagan. That would have been insane, if you tell politicians then you are telling the world.

Re:Let me get this straight....

[Tassach]

Not only did they steal the software, they used it without auditing the source and testing the executables. That would be the smart thing to do even if you don't expect sabotage. You never use any software (or hardware for that matter), regardless of who wrote it, for a mission critical purpose without putting it through some comprehensive certification trials.

Re:Let me get this straight....

[FatRatBastard]

No, the Russians blew up the gas pipeline. Considering they stole the technology, then didn't test it they really have no one to blame but themselves. Sorta like blaming Sony when you buy a VCR that "fell off the back of a truck" when it stops working.

Re:Let me get this straight....

[jarran]

No, no, no. You misunderstand completely. When we blow things up, it's war. When our allies blow things up, it's war. It's only terrorism if someone we don't like blows something up.

There *is* a clear definition of terrorism.

[JeanPaulBob]

The primary difference between acts of war and acts terrorism is the target. When al Qaeda destroyed the Twin Towers, that was terrorism. When they crashed into the Pentagon, that was war. Terrorism is the specific targetting of civilians for the purpose of inspiring fear.

That said, certain elements of the US media would do well to remember this distinction. If I hear Fox News calling attacks on military installations in Iraq "terrorism", I'll start suspecting them of bias. :)

Re:Let me get this straight....

[bruthasj]

> Lucky many weren't killed.

There's the biggest difference. When Americans sit down to plan about blowing things up, they actually put potential casualties and/or collateral damage on the agenda for discussion prior to doing so. When Terrorists sit down to plan about blowing things up, they have this seemingly brainwashed sense of the need to damage, maim, and kill innocent people *directly*.

Re:They could have actually COOPERATED

[CrazyDuke]

"Wait. They did not fully cooperate. They kept balking and stalling at the inspection sites. They even went as far as to kick out the inspectors a few years ago. If they had fully complied, the inspections would have been completed 10 years ago."

Yes, they did refuse to cooperate. They interfered with and then outright stopped inspections when they learned the US was planting CIA agents as American inspection team members. This is what the whole "we'll let inspections resume if there are no Americans on i

Just great

[d_lesage]

Let's cause an explosion that could cause the death of hundreds (if not more), and then gloat about it.

Cold war or not, this is just callous disregard for human life.

Re:Just great

[dillon_rinker]

War is the normal state of human affairs; peace is an ideal condition we extrapolate from the fact that there are intervals between wars.

No known casualties

[PetWolverine]

If you read the article, you know there were no known casualties. It's not a very in-depth piece, but I would guess it was planned that way from the beginning. I'm not usually one to defend the CIA or the whole concept of espionage, but I'm damned glad we won the Cold War, and doing so through intelligence activities involving no loss of life is better than through military action with the potential for nuclear war and mutually assured destruction and all that.

Besides, at least it's an example of the CIA d

so...

[circletimessquare]

you somehow think only the west did nasty things during the cold war and the soviets hugged trees?

exactly how do you fight someone bent on killing you? you sing campfire songs to him?

nice warped view of history and human nature you have there

Well that solves the question

[lhpineapple]

1. Supply computer chips to Soviets
2. ??????????*
3. PROFIT!

*KABOOOOM!

Disinformation

[pubjames]

Tin foil hat on...

This guy works/worked for the intelligence services. He was/is involved in "disinformation" operations. The intelligences services in the USA and UK are currently under increadible scrutiny for having goofed big-time about Iraq. This guy gets an article published in the NY Times about a very successful operation that helped finish the Cold War. There is no evidence, other than this article, and it can't be proved or disproved.

Draw your own conclusions.

Why did the Soviets suddenly suspect all tech?

[khasim]

Even if true, they have ONE explosion and they suddenly suspect ALL the technology they've "stolen" from us?

""The pipeline software that was to run the pumps, turbines and valves was programmed to go haywire," writes Reed, "to reset pump speeds and valve settings to produce pressures far beyond those acceptable to the pipeline joints and welds."

They even "stole" the software?

"But all the software it had stolen for years was suddenly suspect, which stopped or delayed the work of thousands of worried Russi

Re:Disinformation

[pubjames]

Okay: You are a kook.

That's fine.

However, I do think we need a new term. People who express opinions about the possibility of dirty tricks by governments/government agencies are often labelled "kooks" or "conspiracy theorists", with the assumption that their ideas are not based on fact or logical thinking. However, there is another type of person that is increasingly common today. They are the mirror image of conspiracy theorists, people that - even when there is clear evidence of something funny going on - refuse to even consider the possibility.

For example, in February last year Colin Powell gave a presentation to the UN - remember that? Just in case you've forgotten, he said:

1) Iraq posseses 499-500 tonnes of chemical weapons agents.

2) Iraq has hidden warheads containing "biological warfare agent... in large groves of palm trees".

3) Iraq possesses a hidden factory equipped with thousands of centrifuges to make fissionable material for nuclear weapons

4) Iraq possesses at least seven mobile laboratories for producing biological warfare agents.

And other claims like this. Notice that he didn't say "might" or "perhaps", these were statements of fact. Meanwhile, in the UK Tony Blair was telling his electorate that he had seem incontrovertible evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, but he couldn't tell us what it was so we'd just have to trust him. Now we know that nearly all these "facts" were wrong.

And yet, despite all this, there is a certain type of person that is completely unwilling to even consider the possibility that our governments have lied to us. Many people consider that the intelligence agencies "made mistakes", or perhaps even a few rouge elements in the intelligence agencies might have lied, but not the government.

I think there should be a new word for this type of person - a person who finds it impossible to imagine those in authority acting in a bad way even that is a reasonable logical conclusion based on the facts. Or perhaps there is already a word for this type of person and I don't know it. Any ideas anyone?

Re:Disinformation

[Fulcrum of Evil]

I think there should be a new word for this type of person - a person who finds it impossible to imagine those in authority acting in a bad way even that is a reasonable logical conclusion based on the facts. Or perhaps there is already a word for this type of person and I don't know it. Any ideas anyone?

How about Dittohead?

Re:Disinformation

[Atrahasis]

As this person is the equal and opposite of a kook, I propose we reverse the word kook and apply it to them.

Re:Disinformation

[MadCow42]

How about the word for someone that doesn't take everything told to them by the government (or media) at face value?

"Responsible Citizen".

Check your facts. Don't blatantly believe that it's the truth just because it comes from GWB or CNN. If nobody challenges these authority figures, they can get away with ANYTHING. And they will.

MadCow.

Re:Disinformation

[pubjames]

Don't you think any halfway-decent conspiracy could plant a few of these things out in the desert somewhere?

Overall an OK hypothesis, but I think it falls down on this one point.

It was very easy for the government to lie about WMD. Say, the Intelligence Services have someone who says his brother knows a man who thinks overheard someone talking about Saddam's biological weapsons. The Intelligence Services dismiss it as poor evidence, but the government are so desparate to find anything that will support their desire to go to war that they choose to accept it. So in accepting a peice of dubious evidence, and then passing it onto the public, they have effectively lied. I don't find it too difficult to imagine this kind of "conspiracy" has taken place.

What you're talking about is in a whole different league. For the Brits or Americans to deliberately take biological or nuclear weapons into Iraq, hide them, and then pretend to "find" them - the risks of doing that, and the chances of getting found out, are so high that it's something I don't think they would never try.

I think they probably thought "we think they might have WMD, but we haven't got much good evidence. Let's tell the public we do have good evidence so they object less when we invade, then we're sure to find something once we're there and the public will be satisfied." Only they didn't.

Gotta love Safire

[noewun]

Uses the royal "we", as if he was in the trenches fighting, rather than safe at home, daring nothing.

Gus Weiss died from a fall a few months ago.

Tinfoil hat time!

Software caused the failure, not hardware

[Yarn]

A risky business, but there were thankfully no (recorded) casualties. It does make you realise that for some things it's a really good idea to look at the code!

Nice, in a way, to see the French and US governments working together too.

No chips from "the West"

[dimss]

My father was one of developers of top secret soviet chips in 1970's. Many of them were clones of western devices. We had lots of chips, transistors, Fortran listings and special books at home. Most of them were lost because we moved four times in last 24 years.

As far as we (me and my dad) know no chips or computers were purchased from "the West" before 1980's. We developed and manufactured clones of 360, PDP, VAX and others instead. They were software-compatible with Western ones but contained only Soviet (and other Eastern Europe) components.

Later we got VAXen (I remember two of them), Macs (no personal experience) and IBM PC.

Re:No chips from "the West"

[StarBar]

I've heard about this. My cousine used to work for DEC. Right after the dissolvment of the Sovjetunion they received a request for a quotation of "support and services" for a large number of VAX machines in Murmansk!

And yes the designs were 'stolen', but at a very low level. They copied the silicon masks and even the original logotype on them! Although I think they could have designed superior chips themselves if they have had anything faster than Apple II:s at the universities. But they didn't because of

Re:No chips from "the West"

[Memetic]

A company I worked for had a chip cloned, however the original deisgn was faulty, hence so was the clone. The Bulgarians who cloned it got in touch and told our engineers how to work round / fix the fault to improve performance!

They knew they were,at the time, basically immune from prosecution so were not concerned about being so blatant.

These were by the way telecom chips not exactly militarilly sensitive.

And we wonder why other nations. . .

[kfg]

wish to develop their own indigenous computer technologies industries instead of simply buying it from us and possibly subjecting themselves to this sort of intergovernmental terrorism? Had this explosion taken place in a populated area the blood would be on our hands.

It goes way beyond issues of economic competition. It's a question of independence, control and security.

Rather like your use of Open Source software.

KFG

Re:And we wonder why other nations. . .

[swillden]

It goes way beyond issues of economic competition. It's a question of independence, control and security.

Everything went way beyond economic competition between the US and USSR. It was warfare between two countries who couldn't risk open conflict, but nevertheless fought hard at every other level, and for very good reasons. In hindsight we can now look back and say "The US didn't really need to pull all of those nasty tricks, the fundamentally inferior economic model would eventually have destroyed the Soviets regardless," but that was *far* from clear at the time.

And, actually, it's not entirely clear now... had the USSR been able to obtain some sort of clear military supremacy, they absolutely would have used that power to expand, and the economic boost gained through expansion may have enabled them to survive, grow and expand even more.

Destroying an enemy's energy infrastructure in wartime isn't "terrorism", it's sound strategy. This particular attack was exceptionally brilliant, in that it achieved key strategic goals while simultaneously maintaining the necessary fiction that the nations were not at war.

As for the question about what would have happened had this occurred in a populated area, well, it didn't, and the planners of this scheme knew where the pipeline was and where the population centers were. Who's to say what they would have decided if the pipeline had gone through a city?

Finally, the comparison to open source isn't really applicable, because the Soviets had to have stolen source code. You think you can integrate a pipeline control system, which controls hundreds or thousands of bits of custom hardware with an opaque binary? That sort of software *has* to be customized and tweaked to integrate, and it has to be in source form. The Soviet software engineers took stolen code of unknown quality and employed it to control a vital and fragile part of the Soviet energy infrastructure without reviewing it for correctness. That's a serious failure of due diligence.

In fact, exactly the same thing could happen with open source software downloaded from some web site. Open source makes due diligence possible, and allows you to hope that someone else has done it, but for stuff that really matters there's no substitute for doing the work yourself. The Soviets were lazy, the Americans were clever, and the Siberian pipeline paid the price.

I'm seriously skeptical

[ab762]

I invite people to do a Google search on William Safire and assess for themselves his credbility and impartiality. I'm dubious about the first, but certain that he's not impartial.

From the NY Times Biography of William Safire

[citanon]

William Safire, winner of the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary, joined The New York Times in 1973 as a political columnist. He also writes a Sunday column, On Language, which has appeared in The New York Times Magazine since 1979. This column on grammar, usage, and etymology has led to the publication of 10 books and made him the most widely read writer on the English language.

Before joining The Times, Mr. Safire was a senior White House speechwriter for President Nixon. He had previously

Re:I'm seriously skeptical

[BigTom]

The story of the program is partially corroborated here [cia.gov]:

Though there is no information about the explosion.

Gus Weiss' Account in 1996

[citanon]

http://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/96unclass/farewell. htm [cia.gov]

Excellent

[andih8u]

An opinion piece written by a guy who said he used to work down the hall from a guy who said he knew all about this. This sounds more like a review for a book than an actual article. Nothing like a nice post to get all the lemmings whining about loss of life, etc.

I doubt it...

[Slashamatic]

The trans-siberian natural gas pipeline used technology by a UK company called Serck Controls. In those days, the telemetry computers were 6800 based and I believe they used DEC PDP-11s or more likely (because of export controls), Serck's own computers for running the main control system. I know they were working with a bundle of other western companies, but I thought they had the telemetry system side of it completely.

From the Life Imitating Art Dept.

[Cr3d3nd0]

Anyone who has read Tom Clancy's "Red Storm Rising" knows that the events which kick off the 3rd World War are indeed a Siberean oil line being blown up, thus damaging their oil reserves unrepairably. Knowing Clancy's tendency to discover little details like this, and his incredibly acurate rendering of "What if" I can't say it would supprise me at all if this were a true event. Indeed the funniest thing to me is that Clancy except for a few years of ROTC never served in the military at all. (I believe he was an insurance salesman but I could eb wrong about that detail) When he first published his books the government tried to courtmarshall him only to find he had no military experience.

Re:From the Life Imitating Art Dept.

[DavidBrown]

Indeed the funniest thing to me is that Clancy except for a few years of ROTC never served in the military at all. (I believe he was an insurance salesman but I could eb wrong about that detail)

You are correct sir. I was a Midshipman at the US Naval Academy when "The Hunt for Red October" was published. He couldn't get a mainstream publisher, but the Naval Institute Press (which prints mostly textbooks used at USNA) picked it up.

While I don't recall any attempt at subjecting Clancy to a court-martial (remember, the Navy's pet publisher printed this book), I once read a Navy report discussing the accuracy of Clancy's depiction of the US Submarine (the USS Dallas, I recall). It was amazingly accurate, but the report concluded Clancy obtained his information from unclassified sources such as Janes Fighting Ships, etc.

Pitfalls of outsourcing...

[gillbates]

Basically, the Soviets got suckered because they outsourced the software and chips to US firms.

Doesn't anybody see the similarity between what companies are doing now (with outsourcing) and the Soviet Union did 20 years ago?

And in case you're wondering, this is why Congress is afraid of cyber-terrorism - we literally used computers to kill people in Siberia in the 80's. Perhaps they are scared that the same thing could happen here?

I realize the fears of cyber-terrorism are overblown, but it is a real threat. The threat isn't from outside hackers, but rather, from insiders who plant trojan software programs and sabotage hardware. What would happen if a nuclear power plant computer was programmed to silently vent small quatities of nuclear waste over a period of months or years? By the time it would be noticed, it would be too late to avert disaster.

Farewell, CIA, DGSE and other rants...

[Noryungi]

(I am probably going to be moderated down in flames for this, but what the heck... Entering 'Rant' mode...)

From the article:

President Francois Mitterrand of France also opposed the gas pipeline. He took President Reagan aside at a conference in Ottawa on July 19, 1981, to reveal that France had recruited a key K.G.B. officer in Moscow Center. Col. Vladimir Vetrov provided what French intelligence called the Farewell dossier.

This little bit of information is more or less correct. "Farewell" was the code name assigned to Col. Vetrov by his French DGSE (French CIA) handlers.

The next time you are tempted to say that France is not an ally of the USA, just remember that little bit of transatlantic cooperation. I personally think Mitterand was a crook, a thief and a sleazeball -- and I am trying to stay polite, here... But, ultimately, he may have done the right thing here.

But Safire glosses over the saddest part of the Farewell history (emphasis mine):

Vetrov was caught and executed in 1983. A year later, Bill Casey ordered the K.G.B. collection network rolled up, closing the Farewell dossier. [...] Now is a time to remember that sometimes our spooks get it right in a big way.

What Safire does not says is that:

1. Farewell was a French agent, and not an American one! Give credit where credit is due!!
2. Col. Vetrov, aka Farewell, died because of the CIA involvement (If I remember well, he was caught communicating to American agents after the big explosion mentioned), and before DGSE could smuggle him and his family out of the USSR. In short, he paid the price for American incompetence.

In short: every good intelligence in this story was supplied by the French, and the USA made a mess of it, an important source was killed and years of hard work were wasted.

A little bit like the recent situation with a middle-east country with vast oil reserves, but I digress... You can mod me down now. End of Rant mode.

Outsourcing

[b1t r0t]

That's what they get for outsourcing their software.

Some more interesting things

[jon787]

Here [cia.gov] is an article Gus Weiss wrote on the CIA's website that includes some other interesting tidbits. Including the design of the Buran (soviet space shuttle) being a rejected NASA design that was leaked to them as a part of this stuff.

Ok...

[awarnack]

We give the Soviets bad chips. They give us TETRIS. Productivity drops to ZERO on both sides. Sounds fair to me.

The fascinating thing about Bill Safire...

[tverbeek]

... is that he's such a well-preserved specimen of his breed, and his era. This partisan propaganda article of his is a fine example of him reliving the Good Old Days, scolding Americans about the Red Menace, and gloating about the covert harm American "intelligence-gathering" agencies could do to the Godless Commies. The potential loss of innocent lives is irrelevant to him, because we were (in his mind) at war with the Soviet Union, for the very soul of humanity.

Any parallels to contemporary situations are left as an exercise for the reader.

And this is a good thing???

[ajagci]

Col. Vladimir Vetrov provided what French intelligence called the Farewell dossier. It contained documents from the K.G.B. Technology Directorate showing how the Soviets were systematically stealing -- or secretly buying through third parties -- the radar, machine tools and semiconductors to keep the Russians nearly competitive with U.S. military-industrial strength through the 70's. In effect, the U.S. was in an arms race with itself.

Maybe it took Safire thirty years to figure this one out (the guy doesn't seem to be too bright, despite his reputation), but the Soviets themselves were saying it at the time, as were the Europeans. Of course, they didn't put it as "we need to steel technology in order to keep up", they put it as "the US is forcing this arms race upon us".

"The pipeline software that was to run the pumps, turbines and valves was programmed to go haywire," writes Reed, "to reset pump speeds and valve settings to produce pressures far beyond those acceptable to the pipeline joints and welds. The result was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space."

Apart from the scientists and engineers this could have killed, it may also have condemned many civilians to a miserable existence and even killed them. Depriving civilians of heat and energy really is terrorism, whether it is perpertrated by the US or anybody else.

The Soviet Union was not a nice regime. But the end does not justify the means, and it is far from clear whether the downfall of its government and the resulting chaos is making the world safer. These kinds of dirty campaigns may have blowback a century from now, just like US intervention in the Middle East decades ago is hurting us now.

The last chapter of the history of this is not at all written yet. But one thing we can already be certain of: people like Safire, who gloat about such dirty tricks, are morally bankrupt.

U.S.S.R. wasn't "far behind on technology" in '70

[cavac]

Just take a look at key military technology in the '60s and '70s:

First men in space: Russia (implies better ICBMs)

First operational jetfighter with thrust-vectoring (MIG): Russia

First working long-term space stations: Russia (also used for spying)

First undedectable stealth fighter dedected and shot down by: Russian technology in Yugoslavia (nice done, guys!)

World's most powerfull rocket: Russia (Energija), implies that they could launch a BIG amount of plutonium for a BIG shot.

Most reliable rocket technology: Russia

First figher plane with look-and-lock systems (you look at your enemy and the rockets automatically lock onto that target): Russia (IMHO the MIG25)

Well, sure, USA has a great deal of hightech gadgets lying around, but the Soviets are the guys that actually made them working.

There was also a big fuss about that the USSR stole the space shuttle technology for their Buran shuttle. Actually, the Buran uses a more modern design, has a much higher capacity, better aerodynamics and even can fly completly on automatic (whereas the US shuttle must be landed per joystick).

Sure, the USSR stole *some* technology, but the US wasn't any better. Didn't they steal MIG's whenever they saw a chance, just to try out how to beat them in air combat and integrate russian thruster-design into US fighters?

Total Crap

[Anonymous Coward]

The story is total crap.
I served in Strat. Int. and I can say with total confidence that -if- such a thing happened heads in the community would roll.

In a time of all out war, yes it would be ok.
But the Cold War was not all out war and such a thing would have been an act of war, and not worth the risk.

The Nixon and Reagan administrations would have been stupid enough to risk GTNW for a feather like that, but nobody else until GB2.
The pipeline was not a proper target for such an action.

gus weiss

[subtropolis]

Info about the farewell dossier can be found here [cicentre.com].

Here's some info about the fall which killed Gus Weiss:
washinton post article [washingtonpost.com] and Nashville Tenessean obit [tennessean.com]

Notice that Audrey Wolf, mentioned in the latter obit, is Joseph Wilson's literary agent [publishingnews.co.uk].

Not that that should mean anything...

More info from the CIA

[Rufus211]

The CIA actually has a fairly long article (study?) on their website about this incident here [cia.gov]

Quote

[mirko]

Instead, according to Reed -- a former Air Force secretary whose fascinating cold war book, "At the Abyss," will be published by Random House next month

So, it's more an ad than anything else, isn't it ?
And the fact that it ended that dramatically just makes me kind of sceptical... :(

Re:Is this right?

[Xawen]

To be fair, all the US did was sabatoge thier own software. Had they gone out and actually bombed the pipeline, I agree, it would have been really hard on "releations" with the Soviets. However, think about our side of it. Here it is twenty some years later and information like this is just now becoming public. Presumably it was the same on the Soviet side. So in effect, all this did was make the KGB really really suspicious of any software they stole from us. It is very unlikely many people in Siberi

Re:Is this right?

[binaryDigit]

If hundreds of people got hurt, it would have been easy to figure out who was behind it and this could have escalated the tension greatly.

Even if people did get hurt (and given the situation, it wouldn't be all that shocking to later find out than some might have, the Soviet's perhaps not wanting to admit it), the point is that the Soviets got into that situation by stealing technology. It's hard to get all indignant about having the tech you stole backfire (literally) on you. After all, the Soviets co

Re:Self-serving delusion

[Jerf]

They didn't toss in the towel, they were forced to re-evaluate the viability of all stolen technology. Even "legit" technology would fall under scrutiny.

This would take time proportional to the amount of stolen technology, which is to say, a lot.

Sure, this didn't stop them, but add this and that and the other thing and that thing over there, and you get "lost the war".

Nobody in the article claimed more then "helped win the cold war" (emphasis mine), and I say that if you actually read the article insteading of projecting what you think it was going to say onto the article, you'd find that assertion perfectly defensible. I do.

Reading is fundamental.

Re:sorry to say this ...

[the_mad_poster]

Uh... care to explain how? Assuming this guy's not just talking out his ass to hype up CIA wins in the past: The U.S. initially simply turned down the purchase order for the technology when the Soviets approached them, but a KGB man told them that an agent was being sent in to steal it. The U.S. booby trapped the stolen technology which forced the Soviets to reevalutate the viability of ALL the technology they'd STOLEN over the years. So, it's facist to booby trap technology that your enemy is stealing from you for their own gain? Yea... that makes sense. Add in the fact that a blew up a pipeline in the middle of nowhere so nobody even got hurt...

Of course, if you'd read the article, you'd already know all this.

Re:What helped "us" "win" the Cold War

[Alioth]

I certainly don't see myself "winning" anything by the collapse of the USSR, with it's 0% unemployment rate and lack of poverty

I am good friends with a Russian who left the USSR in the early 1980s (along with the rest of his family). *Everybody* lived in a state of poverty in the USSR. True, everyone was equal - equally poor.

At the time, magnetic corrosion was suspected

[citanon]

From http://zeus.nascom.nasa.gov/~pbrekke/soho/spacewea ther/spnews.ps:

Long pipelines stretching hundreds of miles can also run afowl of solar storms. As the earth's magnetic field becomes agitated, these moving magnetic fields near the earth's surface can induce currents to flow in any conducting material like pipe lines or power lines. Over time, these currents can cause increased corrosion and weakening of pipeline walls which are under very high pressure as the liquified gas is pumped at the fastest possible speeds to make them commercially profitable.

Alaskan Oil Pipeline has been specially protected from corrosion caused by ground currents that are induced by geomagnetic activity. Older pipelines were not constructed with these safeguards built into their design, and this can lead to catastrophic and tragic failures.

June 1989 Trans - Siberian Railway explosion The New York Times Monday, June 5 1989 Front Page "500 on 2 trains reported killed by soviet gas pipeline explosion"

On June 4, a powerful gasline explosion demolished part of the Trans-Siberian Tailroad engulfing two passenger trains in flames. Rescue workers at the Ural Mountain site worked frantically to rescue passengers. Of the 1200, all but 500 could be saved. Many of the victims were children bound for holiday camps by the Black Sea. It happened Saturday night between the towns of Ufa and Asha. Apparently gas from a leak in the pipe line was egnited by the two passing trains. The gas settled into the valley that the trains were passing through at the time. Rumors of sabotage were wide spread among the local population.

Re:What helped "us" "win" the Cold War

[poszi]

I certainly don't see myself "winning" anything by the collapse of the USSR, with it's 0% unemployment rate and lack of poverty.

You are lucky that you have never lived in a communist country. I live in a former Soviet "satelite" country which was not so poor but there was poverty during communist times. It may have been not so bad as in third world countries (people generally had something to eat and a place to live) but nevertheless quite a lot of people had miserable lives in Western standards. There were shortage of many basic products, many people lived in crappy homes (small rooms or only one room for the whole family, sometimes no hot water, no toilet, etc.) but the Party bonzos were affluent. There was strong corruption and there were people equal and "more equal". There were some areas that worked OK (I think the education was not that bad) but in general it was bad.

And did I mention freedom?

It may not be great now several years after collapse of the regime and not everything is perfect now (being unemployed is not funny), and there is a lot of room for improvement but most of the people are better now.

Re:What helped "us" "win" the Cold War

[danila]

I live in Russia and before that lived in the USSR (obviously). There was indeed poverty in Soviet Union, but there is also poverty in the US. People are dying from hunger in the United States - a sad fact, but this is not a secret and is freely admitted by the Americans themselves.

So what is important is the scale of poverty and the structure of income distribution. The fact is that today the decile ratio (total income of the richest 10% divided by total income of the poorest 10%) in Russia is 14, which is almost 4 times higher than in the USA and EU. The same ratio for Moscow is 45. So the social inequality is an order of magnitude greater than anything we had in Soviet Union.

And overall the real incomes are still lower today than they used to be in the 1980s after the GDP fell more than 50% in early 1990s. And the situation is much worse in other Soviet republics (except for Baltic states, thanks to generous investments from Scandinavia).

It is already 13 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but people are still worse off than they used to be. May be the personal incomes were not that low, compared with the Western countries, but it was more than compensated by great access to public services, such as free medicine, free education, free everything else. Yes, the state was corrupt, but not to the extent it became corrupt now.

P.S. Personally I am better off than I was, but when I consider the intangible things that were lost (like being proud of your country and stuff), I am no longer that sure. And of course, hope. Being a realist and relatively well informed about the economy (working in an investment banking and management consulting here for some time), I don't have any hope for the country that used to be my home. The only rational thing to do now is to move to the Western Europe.

Re:What helped "us" "win" the Cold War

[smallpaul]

All of that communist-era rhetoric sure sounds out of place in the 21st century.

First, the distinction between the "working class" and the "idle class" is bogus. Today, many workers own shares and many owners and owner/executives work extremely long, hard hours. Most CEOs are workaholics and entrepreneur-owners are worse.

Go to Best Buy and see what is happening with your "worker class". We are consuming goods and services that were simply unavailable and/or unaffordable in the 1960s. We are objectively richer in that we can afford to do and buy everything our predecessors could and more.

Communist rhetoric will fail as long as it is totally out of step with the lives people live every day. For instance, I would listen much more attentatively if you would stop talking about the working class (who are doing pretty damn well historically speaking) and start talking about the chronically undermployed class. But Marx wasn't interested in them so today's communists aren't interested either.