> Russia went from being a country pushed around by the Japanese, with an GDP equivalent to 1917 Brazil, to a superpower sending satellites, men into space, probes to the Moon (the first country to do so). It also had little crime and little poverty.

Russia went from one of the leading european powers to a country ran like a prison. It's easier to score up country-wide achievements like moon probes if you have slaves instead of citizens — a system that even the legendary lead engineer Korolev was a victim of.