>jks -- There's no comparison with Soviet goods, none. Soviet TV sets
>regularly
>exploded; the smart purchaser kept a bucket of sand by the set. There was a
>actually a TV show under perestroika that was based on making fun of
>worthless goods. A handful of Soviet products, machine tools and the like,
>were world market quality. For the rest, Soviet industry made stuff that was
>
>unmarketable.
>
>They built pretty good MiGs and Kalashnikovs and space stations. I think
>priorities had something to do with this.
>
>Didn't the USSR sell cars to Latin America?
The U.S. doesn't build TVs.
Is it really that fair to compare Soviet TVs with Japanese? Russia was once a poor and barely industrialized country. For all its many faults - and there were many - Soviet planning did manage to industrialize the place to the point where you'd even think of comparing a Soviet TV with a Japanese one. Do people ever talk about Turkish or Indonesian TVs?
Doug