>It seems to boil down to the matter of profits. On the soviet side, there was none involved, other than boosting the makers' bragging rights and showing off against them capitalists. On the capitalists' side, however, the whole branch is notorious of skimming, making outrageous profits on products which have the clever marketing (consisting of, I guess, strategically allocated bribes, set up demos, and maybe some blackmail) as their most prominent feature.

Which explains all those other Russian successful products...

Lada, Moskvitch to name just a few.. <s>