> It was so ingrained in Soviet leadership that it was sometimes counterproductive - one famous example is Beria's insistence on strictly following the atomic bomb designs lifted from the Manhattan project which probably didn't make the bomb makers' jobs any easier.
That's because because they had realized they were behind already. And it's not like the Americans and the Soviets were going to open their nuclear bomb blueprints so they world got to laugh at the copy-cat design.
> It's not really how the Soviet Union operated, this sort of "technology transfer" was fundamental to Soviet development from the start.
As far as computers went in the 1950s and 1960s the Soviets initially did pretty well. Their BESM-1 machine was the fastest in Europe for some years. They even had revolutionary designs like the Setun with its famous ternary logic. So they had the brains and the capability do build them. But due to planning and political hubris they lost their lead.
But once they were behind it was considered better to copy than not have the technology at all, but yes, those were made by political appointees and people who did not listen or take the scientists' or engineers' opinions seriously.
