This morning brings news of another “industrial accident” in Russia. Via OSINTdefender, comes news of a major explosion at the Zagorsk Optical-Mechanical Plant. From video shot on scene, it appears that artillery shells were either being stored there, or were being made/refurbished there. Read the thread for more details, but a couple of things pop out for me.

I’m catching hints that Soviet-era work habits seem to have made a comeback. Drinking on the job, poor quality, poor process control, and more may have returned along with the attitude “They pretend to pay us, so we pretend to work.” It still sort of floors me how many people still don’t know how bad things were in that regard in the USSR.

Clearly such people never had the dubious joy of a bite of Soviet chocolate, which one could be forgiven for suspecting was really compressed excrement. Or examined a Soviet made product of almost any type. Tolerance? What’s a tolerance? “Identical” parts varied wildly, and the instructions seemed to be that if part A fits into part B, go smaller than dimension to be sure it fits.

[LW’s classic reference can be seen in the clip below from near the end of “The Hunt for Red October,” with the late Richard Jordan and Joss Ackland. His point is that the Russian ability to make war on par with the West was always overstated, and the same issues still plague them even in the post-Soviet era. — Ed]