To me the most interesting thing that came out after the USSR collapsed was the fact that they had already transferred over 150 nuclear weapons to Cuba by the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. (Mostly tactical, but some MRBM warheads as well that could have reached as far as Dallas or Washington, DC if they were "mated" to missiles.) That is, in the US version of that story, Kennedy's embargo was all that prevented nukes from getting installed on the island — turning back the boats and all that. But in reality the US had completely missed the fact that dozens and dozens of nuclear weapons were already on the island. I think this might have changed the US response to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Certainly they would have been more hesitant to threaten an invasion of the island, since that would have certainly meant tactical nuclear weapons would have been used by the Soviet-Cuban forces, leading to great casualties on the US side with a high chance of escalation to larger, more general nuclear war.

To put it another way, during the Cuban Missile Crisis there were more nuclear warheads in Cuba than either Pakistan or India has today.

I wrote about this on my blog awhile back, if you want more details and a book recommendation.

The more surprising thing was not what they did not know, such as a secret vault of huge mega weapons, or something of the like. It was the fact that the intelligence of the Soviet Union was in certain aspects completely wrong. I have discussed a famous primary document before, but here it again needs to be discussed. The Team B document was a document produced by outside analysis for the CIA. The document was riddled with assumptions and ultimately the fall of the Soviet and the release of knowledge from it caused the entire document to be debunked as wrong. Problem is, the United States made a decade long mistake to try to catch up with the USSR that really did not have the weapons.

The major mistake was the assumption that the Soviet Union had better missile capabilities than the United States. The truth ended up being that they did have some missiles that performed, however they could not produce a large number of them. Same is true for the Soviet Union's long range missile capability. They did possess bombers that could reach farther, however the Team B document thought they could produce a large number of the bombers, in reality it was a handful. This caused the US to build up the military for a threat that was not there in actuality. Leading to the period known as the Second Cold War, during the Cold War. The spin that some place on this expediture was that it caused the Soviet Union to outspend itself leading to its collapse. I think that is a really, really optimistic view that removes the blame of the CIA and the government for truly failing to know the actual capabilities of the Soviet Union. Thus costing the American government gobbles of money. If there was actual proof of this before the Soviet Union collapsed we may have not spent the 1980s building up the military for non-existing threat.

The Soviet Union continued work on biological weapons until the very end of the Cold War despite international agreements banning their use or development.

It adds an interesting level to Gorbachev's pursuit of nuclear disarmament, knowing that the Soviets had that ace in the hole.

One thing I've heard is that after the Cold War, the inteligence communities on both sides began communicating, and some of the Americans asked their Soviet counterparts how they were always able to spot forged USSR passports. The soviets said they just looked at the staples; Soviet staples rusted because they were made of shitty pig iron, while American staples didn't because they were stainless steel.

This is the basic version of the story, ill try and find the source for it later today. I've always found this a good way of illustrating just how good Soviet espionage was compared to American espionage (although, this is a debatable opinion.)

The Russians had developed many strange weapons some of which are detailed in "Fruits of War" by Michael White. The Russians had developed a laser which by focusing many mirrors and high frequency lasers could shoot satellites out of orbit (well melt them anyway), while it was extremely infeasible to do (only 1 test worked) it helped them develop many other technologies.

Also torpedoes. The Russians managed to develop prototypes for torpedoes that used supercavitation technology to go extremely fast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VA-111_Shkval

EDIT: Those torpedoes are still faster than anything NATO currently has in its arsenal, so fast that a submarine that fires one can sink several ships before they even know the torpedoes are in the water. can react in time to save themselves.

It's not really "capabilities" and not really the "Soviet Union", but many were astonished to find out after the fall of the Berlin Wall that East Germany had secretly housed 11 former left-wing German terrorists from the Red Army Faction. They also provide limited training and equipment to several active Red Army Faction members who returned to West Germany.

Many folks might think "why is this astonishing? Weren't a bunch of these groups sponsored by the Soviets and their satellites?"

Well no, actually. Through much of the seventies and eighties, it was a common assumption by folks on the right that most multinational terrorism could be tied directly to the Soviet Union. To an extent it made sense; most (or at least most prominent) terror groups of the time overtly espoused Marxism. Groups like the Red Army Faction were explicitly trying to bring about Socialist Revolution. And groups that we would now think of as purely nationalistic, like the Provisional IRA of Northern Ireland, were full of Marxist ideology at the time.

But were they part of giant, soviet-sponsored global terrorist conspiracy? Not really. But this didn't stop folks from trying to make the case. William Casey (Reagan's head of the CIA) created a shadow group within his CIA to provide "proof" when the general CIA analysts did not support the allegations. They worked with a Rome-Based journalist, Claire Sterling, to create book "the Terror Network" by providing her with entire monographs of off-the-record, and not-for-attribution quotes of unverified data. The book, which one could argue Casey effectively dictated, eventually became a bestseller and Casey would use it as "proof" within the administration that he was correct (without, of course, admitting his role in creating the book).

Most people, however, assumed that in general, the Soviet Union and it's satellites were much more interested in detente and maintaining the status quo than funding quixotic terrorism campaigns. The downside was so obviously great and there were precious few upsides to supporting terrorism that it almost defied credulity that it could be true.

So when the wall fell down and it was revealed that the East German Stasi had housed and provided new identities; it was fairly crushing to folks in the latter camp.

In retrospect, though, it appears that the operation was mostly the work of some rogue elements within the Stasi. It's not totally clear that the leadership of DDR was aware of the presence of the RAF members, and it is equally clear that they were not part of any grand, global terrorist effort.

Masha Geeson, the Russian-American journalist, wrote a compelling biography of Putin last year. I found it compelling and readable. But she provided a short passage that refers to the RAF that makes essentially no sense to me, and calls into question the reliability of the rest of her facts. However, if what she says IS true, then it clearly supports a direct link to Moscow (though that link might be tenuous).

Here's the money quote from her book

"Still, it was in the West—so close and so unreachable for someone like Putin (some other Soviet citizens posted in Germany had the right to go to West Berlin)—that people had the things he really coveted. He made his wishes known to the very few Westerners with whom he came in contact—members of the radical group Red Army Faction, who took some of their orders from the KGB and occasionally came to Dresden for training sessions. “He always wanted to have things,” a former RAF member told me of Putin. “He mentioned to several people wishes that he wanted from the West.” This source claims to have personally presented Putin with a Grundig Satellit, a state-of-the-art shortwave radio, and a Blaupunkt stereo for his car; he bought the former and pilfered the latter from one of the many cars the RAF had stolen for its purposes."

If this is true; this is clear proof that the RAF WAS directed by Moscow, and, amazingly enough, the currently leader of Russia was directly involved.

But, it's important to note, no one else has made this connection. I have not heard of anyone else making this direct connection to the soviet union in anything other than supposition. And I am confused why she refers to her source as a "former member of the RAF" without naming him or her. We actually know each and every one of the RAF who did this. We know their names and they talk readily. Why is she masking this quote under anonymity? Especially considering it contradicts what they have all said publicly.

It also strikes me as an odd thought that Gessen acknowledges that many Russians were allowed to travel to East Berlin and pick up western items, but because Putin was not allowed to do this then his first thought was to ask RAF terrorists to bring in the western goods. Wouldn't it have raised less questions to simply ask his colleagues traveling to West Berlin to pick something up?

This thread has caused a lot of bad answers, so I'll take this time to remind everybody of our rules:

An in-depth answer gives context to the events being discussed so that someone who is unfamiliar with the area can understand. An in-depth answer is usually more than a sentence or two. Use a balanced mix of context and explanation and sources and quotations in your answer. Being able to use Google to find an article that seems related to the question does not magically make you an expert. If you can contribute nothing more than your skills at using Google to find an article, please don't post.

Ask yourself these questions:

Do I have the expertise needed to answer this question?

Have I done research on this question?

Can I cite my sources?

Can I answer follow-up questions?

If you answer "Yes" to all of these questions, then proceed. If you answer "No" to one or more of these questions, seriously reconsider what you're posting.

So if you're response is a wikipedia link to a Soviet program, don't post it. If you have a blurb about something you heard once, please don't post it. Instead, do a bit of research so that you can give a more comprehensive answer.

I always thought that Dead Hand fail deadly nuclear response system designed so that any American strike would immediately and automatically result in a Russian counter response was really shocking. I believe the reality of the system is still very much up for debate but there was a pretty neat Wired article about it a while back that always sticks with me:

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/17-10/mf_deadhand?currentPage=all

I'd be curious if any of the more informed members of this sub can weigh in on the consensus as far as the reality of the system is concerned?

Let me lightly edit something I wrote on about the Suez Canal Crisis:

[Edit note: I removed footnotes, and just put the relevant sources at the bottom.]

Tl;dr: during the Suez Canal Crisis, Soviet diplomats and intelligence officials told the Nasser government that they shouldn't worry about an invasion from the UK, France, or Israel, because the United States wouldn't support it.

This was a mystery in Suez Canal historiography for a long time. How did the USSR know this? They were right that the U.S. wouldn't support it, but what prescient or subtle analysis of U.S. foreign policy led them to this conclusion? Answer: bugging the U.S. embassy.

There was however, no small amount of interesting intelligence work on the part of the Soviets about their apparent nonchalance regarding the nationalization. From archivists who found sources inside the KGB, Fursenko and Naftali cite the newly uncovered wiretapped, deciphered and translated cables relayed in and out the United States embassy. Examining State Department records kept by former American Ambassador to the Soviet Union Llewellyn E. Thompson, Fursenko and Naftali, discovered that the United States learned of the surveillance system in the early 1960s, and that the Americans believed the system may have been in place as early as 1953, although the archivists examining the KGB archives assert that the system was installed in 1956. The breadth of the breach of the United States Embassy is unclear from the Soviet perspective. For what it is worth, and it may be worth quite a bit, the State Department believed the breach to be total. If this assertion is true then during the entirety of the Suez Crisis, and possibly a good bit before, the Soviet Union had complete and total access to all incoming and outgoing documents in the U.S. Embassy. This paints a remarkable picture of the Soviet response to the Suez Canal crisis. The Soviet Union’s and indeed Khrushchev’s personal belief that the Western powers would ultimately come to terms with the nationalization of the Canal was based on the correct impression from U.S. Embassy documents. What the Soviet Union did not glean from those embassy documents was the extent of the differences between the United Kingdom, France and the United States on this issue. Thus, immediately after the nationalization, the Soviet Union viewed Nasser’s quite accurate warnings that military action from Britain and France would be forthcoming as nothing more than the worried concerns of a small nation’s leader who did not have access to the extensive Soviet intelligence network, because the Soviet Union believed that if military action was not permitted by the United States, then it would not occur. Thus, throughout the entirety of the Suez Canal crisis, the Soviet Union and its Foreign Ministry operated on the correct premise that it rightly ascertained United States intentions in Egypt and the Middle East. Demonstrating its competency to Nasser, Vladimir Semenov, a deputy of Shepilov’s, informed the Egyptian Ambassador to the Soviet Union that, “The United States follows a somewhat different line on the Suez question.”

#Brief Sources:

#Heikal, Mohamed. The Sphinx and the Commissar: the Rise and Fall of Soviet Influence in the Middle East. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1978.

#Heikal, Mohamed. Cutting the Lion’s Tail: Suez Through Egyptian Eyes. London: Andrew Deutsch, 1986.

#Fursenko, Aleksandr and Timoyth Naftali. Khrushchev’s Cold War: The Inside Story of an American Adversary. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006.

#Kyle, Keith. Suez: Britain’s End of Empire in the Middle East. New York: IB Tauris Publishers, 2003.

Americans were surprised at Soviet advances in Helmet Mounted Display systems developed for their pilots. While South Africa was the first to deploy a successful HMD system, used with particular effectiveness in Angola, the Soviets quickly caught up with their own version.

Americans got their hands on the Soviet HMD system after Germany reunited and the recent delivery of MiG-29s were available for testing. While an excellent aircraft and a match for the F-15C, it was the HMD that really edged the MiG-29 over its adversaries. It allowed the pilot to achieve lock on any target in the field of vision rather than having to point the aircraft within a relatively narrow targeting cone and fire off missiles much quicker. This, combined with the higher maneuverability of the MiG-29 made it an extremely effective fighter.

Not exactly a game-changer, but good for a nasty suprise: The US had spotted the Soviet Ekranoplan, a bizarre hybrid of jet aircraft and small ship, they were pretty stumped as to what it was or how it worked, since they didn't see it in action. It looks a bit like a jet-powered flying boat, but in fact it uses the ground-effect (like, and not like, a hovercraft) to generate lift rather than its stubby wings. Since it looks a bit like this and a bit like that, US spies weren't sure what it was.

It's not a super-universal vehicle, but what it can do, it does very well-- rapid infantry- or special-forces strike over level terrain, flat water, or ice and do so, by keeping an altitude of around 70 feet at the highest, under the radar. Perfect for seas like the Baltic or the Black sea under most conditions, as well as zipping over the ice-caps into the North of Scandinavia. Probably didn't have the range, even with support units staged on the way, to make it to North American, but I don't know for sure.

In the early 90s, a KGB archivist name Mitrokhin, defected to the West with thousands of documents. He published them in a couple of book. Among the items in those books were these:

The Soviets had weapon caches hidden in NATO countries for large scale sabotage if the Cold War ever turned hot. The KGB had spies that went undetected for decades. The KGB spread rumors that FBI Director Hoover was homosexual, that AIDS was created by the US military, and promoted JFK assassination theories.

Many more items in source.

Source: Mitrokhin Archive

The superiority of russian ERA mounted on their best tanks. In '85, if conflict would have kicked off, any tanks with Kontakt-5 ERA would be practically impervious to the M829 and M829A1 rounds used by American M1A1s, and very much invulnerable to the 105mm cannons mounted on the majority of American tanks at the time.

Also, combined with the overestimated penetration values of the TOW missile (which equipped many american vehicles and helicopters), Soviet armored divisions might have fared much better than evaluated during the cold war.

Sources: Study on TOW performance: http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_conversions/89801/DOC_0001066239.pdf

ERA performance http://fofanov.armor.kiev.ua/Tanks/EQP/kontakt5.html

I seem to recall the Cobra Manoeuvre being unknown until one of the first public Russian Air Shows after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Basically the pilot would pull right back on the stick and effectively stall out the plane, but due to the nature of the V wing the plane would maintain altitude but it's effective speed would be reduced to a very low number of knots.

What does this mean: Back in the day Radar would detect where the plane was and then look in areas it could be, deliberately not scanning a small area around where the plane used to be. In the instance of a dog fight, the cobra manoeuvre would have rendered American Radar temporarily useless, giving the Russian Pilot precious seconds in an air battle.

Literally zero sources due to my phone, but hoping someone here will corroborate.

"The Sword and the Shield" by Mitrokhin is a great source of information on what really went on in the KGB. Mitrokhin was the KDB archivist who for decades made copies of everything that went in to archive then brought it out with him when he defected.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Sword-Shield-Mitrokhin-Archive/dp/0465003125

When I was a kid I remember hearing that the CIA grossly underestimated Soviet defense spending as a percentage of GDP, is this true?

This is quite a minor point, but with the end of the Cold War, those in Britain who'd advocated massive nuclear armament programs had a bit of a shock. Throughout the conflict the USSR never even bothered counting how many weapons the UK had—to them it was that insignificant. I'm not going to argue that it wasn't in Britain's interest to go nuclear, but it kind of puts things in perspective a little.

Yes, their biological weapons program was extremely scary. They weaponized several common illnesses to make them spread very easily. The reason was that the US declared we had given up all biological weapons research but the Communist managed to convince themselves it was a ruse and the more the US said we gave them up the more USSR was conviced they were falling behind.

Most poeple aren't aware that the USSR had a huge and painful development after the civil war. Before the revolution 95% of the population were peasants. A huge part of them collaborated with the revolution. When they listen to speeches and heard "freedom" they interpreted freedom as back to the rights of the middelages and production only for themselves. But the communists wanted a growing part of workers for the new industry and reacted with force and of course gulags to secure a raising production of food.

Because the communists were aware that Marx demanded a developed industrial nation before a revolution, which is clear, because the base to give poeple all their needs for free isn't possible, when necessary wares are lacking, they didn't call the state communistic and didn't involved the common poeple in the process of controlling the nation, like Marx dreamed off. The communists wanted in the first place to develop the nation at all costs before they wanted to take the next step.

Anyway most european leftists looked to the USSR because of the development speed and successes, like theatres, opera houses and health care for the masses. Most european communists weren't unable to gain substancial success after 1918 and most nations in Europe moved toward right wing governments. The USSR became a lighthouse for leftists. Imprisonments were perceived as a necessary part of the fight against infliltration and sabotage from the west. Always remember that the US, GB and France financed mercenaries against the communists after 1918 and supported Poland in the polish soviet wars. Eventually Stalin took over and he removed a large part of the interlectuals in the communistic party and replaced them by buerocrats. Later the USSR secret service had to fullfill imprisoment quotes, which was a base for the huge wave of imprisonments in the 1930th.

Alle industrial countries made a more or less violent development into the industrial age, when peasants were forced to become workers, but the developement of the USSR was really short and therefore very violent.