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A comment on China Has Whole Towns Focused on Making Electric Cars. Parent comment

Re:China Has Whole Towns Focused on Making Electric Cars by knolax on Monday June 03, 2019 @01:28PM (#20085719)
> USSR, Imperial Russia, which ok, might have not have been democratic in any modern sense

That's a massive understatement. The Russian Empire abolished serfdom in 1861[0]. There's no way that the Soviet space program was an extension of institutions from a society that was literally feudal a generation before the revolution.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_reform_of_1861

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Re:China Has Whole Towns Focused on Making Electric Cars by cat199 on Monday June 03, 2019 @01:40PM (#20085847)
While i agree that much of the technological progress happened under soviet times, USA also abolished slavery in the 1860s, so this is not a very good data point for comparison.. one could make the argument that most 'western' (in a loose sense) technological progress beyond initial industrialization happened from WW1+ ... which would imply different things for different places
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Re:China Has Whole Towns Focused on Making Electric Cars by oblio on Monday June 03, 2019 @02:07PM (#20086219)
Russia was abolishing serfdom and discovering the periodic table at about the same time. History isn't fully linear.
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