> behind who, china ? behind the us and western europe. that's the reason why most soviet industries simply disintegrated on contact with western imports when the ussr was gone. > well just make shoes, how hard is it if you have spaceships. quite hard, apparently. ussr had immense struggles with producing consumer goods right up until it croaked.   the "product" in this case was 2 and sometimes 3 or more decades behind the competition. you don't "improve" your way out of that. especially when the leadership that was supposed to be driving those changes had no notion of competition whatsoever.
Japan