This is the CIA document that noted that (May 1990): http://web.archive.org/web/20120611225718/http://www.foia.ci...

Notably, it also stated:

  The telecommunications deficiency is a particularly serious 
  problem for the Soviets. The USSR lacks the type of extensive, 
  serviceable, open-access, civil telecommunications infrastructure
  has proved to be an essential ingredient in the U.S. software
  industry's capability to support the needs of software uses an 
  all sectors of the U.S. economy technologies critical to the U.S. 
  Industries lead include wide area networks such as INTERNET, 
  TYMNET and TELENET accessible to most software developers in the 
  United States; equally important are the local area networks used 
  to connect software development teams distributed in different 
  locations within large buildings or among several facilities 
  within a large industrial park.

This is a fascinating insight into the projected future, although of the three, it was the INTERNET that hang around and turned the world on its head!

TYMNET by the way is noted here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tymnet

"It was the first space shuttle to perform an unmanned flight, including landing in fully automatic mode."

"[...] despite a lateral wind speed of 61.2 kilometres per hour (38.0 mph), it landed only 3 metres (9.8 ft) laterally and 10 metres (33 ft) longitudinally from the target mark."

That sounds pretty impressive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_%28spacecraft%29

The STS could land on its own too, but due to political and safety concerns this functionality was disabled by default. In scenarios where a damaged shuttle was in space, the crew would board the ISS and turn on this functionality via a cable that connected the computer to the landing gear. Once that was set, NASA could fly it home remotely.

The Buran never carried a person into space and Soviet space management never had to make the decision to enable this while pilots sat in the cockpit. I think they would have been under the same pressure as NASA and allowed them to fly and not use full automation outside of emergencies.

This is cool, but if you compare the landing footage from STS-1 and Buran, the Buran landing looks decidedly squirrelly, I'm not sure I would want to be on that ride. On the other hand, John Young waxed the first STS landing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnnTFJ1BcHw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPexsehcMhw

They do say there was a bad crosswind, but really I think a spaceplane should be able to avoid bad weather.

Actually, the Russians developed a completely different programming language Prolog and Prol2 that had nothing to do with the French Prolog. It just happened to have the same name.

Source: http://forum.oberoncore.ru/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=4111