I had an old Soviet-era made excavator digger standing on my property. It was standing out there long enough for trees to grow through the cabin and way above it. We cleared them and put a little grease here and there and it started like charm.

Another random example seems to be a Remington beard trimmer I had which recently gave up after nearly 20 years of service.

Edit: I guess we should make an honourable mention for the Opportunity Mars Rover.

> I also like other well engineered simple long-lasting stuff.

Soviet engineering as a whole is interesting in this respect. From syllabuses I've read, engineering education in the USSR was at least as rigorous as in the USA. The problem for them was that they had to design things for an extremely unreliable and inefficient society, so they had to emphasize simplicity and durability in both manufacture and use. I've seen a few books covering the social issues facing Soviet engineers and examples of notable designs.

That bit about 'having to design for an extremely unreliable and inefficient society' sounds like Cold War Western propaganda. Soviet designs were not made efficient and durable because of that. They were made efficient and durable because that was the default for engineering until capitalism discarded that default and forced profit-maximizing designs that function over bloated specs and planned obsolescence. Otherwise in late 19th century and early 20th century, every country was more or less doing similar engineering design.

Also, the science and engineering curriculums were much heavier than the US ones. Just check a few Soviet science/eng textbooks that you can find online.

As someone who remembers the latter part of the Cold War, I can tell you that the actual inefficiencies of the Soviet system were significantly underestimated in the dominant Western narrative.

Your ideas about Soviet industry appear to be based on some ideology rather than familiarity with Soviet culture. I can't think of one single book that gives a good overview of Soviet engineering, but some good ones to start with might be Graham's The Ghost of the Executed Engineer, Gerovitch's From Newspeak to Cyberspeak, and Idov's Made in Russia: Unsung Icons of Soviet Design. I think most of the really interesting examples are in military technology, but unfortunately I don't know any good books surveying that area.

Even if there was a "good old days" of manufacture in the West when products were always designed to be as efficient and durable as possible, that is different from what I described in the USSR. Since quality of manufacture was usually terrible, Soviet designs could not demand close tolerances in manufacture and had to be considerably over-engineered to avoid catastrophic failure from manufacturing defects. The USSR was also chronically short of equipment, so for things deployed, long life and resistance to abuse was more important than polish.

> actual inefficiencies of the Soviet system were significantly underestimated in the dominant Western narrative

Not at all.

> Your ideas about Soviet industry appear to be based on some ideology rather than familiarity with Soviet culture.

They are based on quite sizable knowledge of history of warfare, defense technology. Which all the effort of the Soviet system was geared towards. Placing its efficiency there.

> Since quality of manufacture was usually terrible

There. That bit is strongly-entrenched Cold War propaganda that actually stems from the aristocratic propaganda against the left-wing ideologies when they first appeared in late 19th century - 'them peasants' cant do anything good.

For example, in this outlook, we are told that T-34 had 'terrible build quality' because one could see outside from in between some riveted plates. And this is drummed up incessantly by comparing mainly Angloamerican tanks to Soviet ones. Not outright saying that those tanks were better, mind that - because the track record of that particular Soviet technology, the T-34, is too obvious to be able to deny. But anything can be smeared. And that's the objective of such propaganda. Similarly, Angloamerican establishment diminishes German or Italian technologies by smearing them with non-related issues. Absolutely no different than how outlets like Murdoch press operate today.

None of which have any relation to the questions at hand, obviously - since no bullet could statistically enter from the tiny opening in between the riveted plates of T-34, nor the 'over-complicated' German tanks had much problem with being so because they were mainly intended for defense operations in the latter parts of the war so they did not need to travel much.

Same goes for consumer sectors.

The fact that Soviet system raised more than a hundred million people from mud huts to apartments, from illiteracy to space age is undeniable. So, it is SMEARED on the 'quality' of Kruschevka apartments, and, well, its rather hard to smear Soviet scientists, but they try anyway.

The USSR was chronically short of everything outside what was needed for the military to fight World War 3, indeed. That was because they had only 15% of the world's resources to rely on in order to maintain a military bloc that was preparing to fight the war to end human civilization.

One can easily turn the table and say that, why the US, who had 85% of world's resources and who had the benefit of making entire '3rd world' work as its unpaid colonies had so much poverty, homelessness and suffering in the same period. Especially among the blacks, minorities and those who were not from the 'right' socioeconomic background.

Then again, the inefficiency is built into capitalism in the form of maximization of profit.

There's a (long-ish) quote out there about Soviet ammunition sizes vs American/NATO. About how it's simpler etc, they have less variety of sizes, do you know what I'm talking about? I can't find it.

Doesn't ring a bell. If you can give more details about who said it, that might help someone find your answer.

Seeing your comment being downvoted is the most American thing I've witnessed on the internet today

> What are some other well engineered long-lasting products?

How dare you not mention Nokia!?

Jokes aside, if you restrict it to "long-lasting" - Japanese woodworking, Toyota Hilux, Honda Super Cub... in fact a lot of post ww2 era Japanese manufacturing.

If you include high fault tolerance as well - a lot of USSR engineering is beautiful in this aspect. I recall they design a propeller with 8 blades because they expected 4 of them will crack in early stage of usage. Same apply to screw enclosures.

What scares you from touching guns? Guns are fun, shooting is one of my favorite hobbies but I don't one a ton like a gun nut.

I don't begrudge anyone being scared of guns. They can have carastrophic results even when handled properly.

The snake charmer isn't afraid of snakes, but that doesn't mean that your average Joe should go around, blithely picking up every snake they see.

A snake charmer isn't afraid of snakes because he'll typically mutilate the animal by breaking the fangs or cutting out the venom sacks before going anywhere near it. A snake charmer will be afraid of every other snake.