The Soviet Union was an amazing period in the history of our country. A system based on an understanding of universal justice and disappearing for inequality at the African level.

What gives an advantage to a person? What makes him first among equals? Intelligence. A high intellect is characterized, in particular, by the fact that it cannot be satisfied with the existing circumstances - it always strives for more, for that which is not yet.

In other words, a person in his development is an inventor. And it turns out that the Soviet man at his highest point is also an inventor. Superiority in the technological sphere was an important part of Soviet self-identification: we make rockets, we blocked Yenisei, Zvorykin invented the television, and Ponyatov the VCR.

Missiles with the Yenisei - okay, let them be. But Vladimir Kozmich Zvorykin was a US citizen, as well as the inventor of the VCR Alexander Matveyevich Ponyatov. The latter, by the way, did not fundamentally speak Russian, he considered the USSR a stronghold of evil.

But what remains to a person associating himself with the Soviet Union? What primacy is proud of those who were born, or perhaps grew up and even held in the USSR?

Tim Skorenko wrote about this a thick book “Invented in the USSR” - here you open it on any page, read, and then quote in any political dispute. Moreover, not only in a dispute where you are on the side of official Soviet historiography, but also in that dispute where you are allegedly over a fight - that is, say that everything was not so simple. Yes, the revolution, the bloody Civil, multi-million losses in World War II. But wait a moment. Let's figure it out. There was an empire. And within this empire, processes took place - including the processes according to the invention of everything that had not yet happened.

Let's say we are used to thinking that the project of the Soviet supersonic airliner TU-144 simply failed, because it was overtaken by the British-French Concord. The author of the book “Invented in the USSR” did a great job: he studied archives, technical documentation and a social section of the era in order to demonstrate a simple, but not obvious thought. The Russians invented the supersonic passenger plane before everyone else, but they did not need it.

But it was like this - and after reading the book you will see that this is the only way. They began to design a supersonic passenger liner at once in several countries: the USA, France, Great Britain. Everywhere the project was about the same, because such an aircraft cannot have a wing shape other than the one we know and recognize when looking at the Concorde.

The Americans did the trickiest of all: they abandoned the project and made the Boeing 747 - not a very fast, but the most economically viable aircraft in history. The French and British combined their projects and as a result created the very Concorde, one of which crashed during take-off near Paris on July 25, 2000.

And in the Soviet Union they just learned that they were inventing the liner somewhere, and decided to invent it themselves. Because someone in this world must be ahead of the rest of the planet.

Surprisingly, in the USSR in the Tupolev Design Bureau, the aircraft was really invented. Own and the first. The fact that it was a completely independent and innovative development is evidenced by the design features: front plumage, increased length compared to the Concord, large capacity, original engines made in Samara.

TU-144 was presented to the public a few months earlier than the Concord. But, unfortunately, there was no public for the TU-144. Literally.

Yes, in the Soviet Union they created the world's first supersonic passenger plane. But there was nobody to fly on it.

There was a market for Concord. There were thousands of millionaires in Europe and the United States willing to pay huge sums of money just to fly from Paris to New York three hours faster. There were no such people in the USSR. What are the millionaires in the USSR in 1969?

Therefore, tickets for the TU-144 were expensive, but not enough to recoup the fuel that he ate with his Samara engines at 36 tons per hour of flight. In addition, there were no airports in the Union that could accept such a liner. Rather, there were very few of them - say, on a supersonic airliner it was possible to fly to Alma-Ata. It was impossible to Khabarovsk - there was not enough fuel.

But they did the plane! He flew! And he was the first in the world. True, he crashed at demonstrations in Le Bourget. And then he served for the needs of the post office.

And what feelings can this story have in us? Sadness, resentment, perplexity.

And Tim Skorenko in his book writes that the sad consequences do not detract from the greatness of the result and, most importantly, the greatness of those people who achieved this result and achieved it.

The Papanins were indeed the first to make a drifting polar research station. Vladimir Petrovich Demikhov was really the first to successfully transplant the head of one dog to another, and this marked the beginning of the whole world transplantology. And yes, it was invented here by parachuting, thermonuclear fusion and deep underground stations.

But at the same time, half of all significant scientists repressed it here, it was not here that the inventors had an incentive to work and develop due to the absence of any sensible copyright law, this was not invented by any children's toys in 70 years. Yes, yes, all the toys that you recall with a sigh of emotion as integral signs of your childhood were either licensed or simply stolen.

Is it good or bad? This is normal. And it is very difficult. Tim Skorenko wrote his huge volume about this endless beautiful and exciting complexity of the system, man and inventive thought.

“Invented in the USSR” - this is another and this time a successful monument to a great, but hopeless empire.

The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.