>> I always found the dichotomy of Soviet culture interesting - that engineers were the most pragmatic I've ever seen, and the politicians were just...fucking idiots.

I'm not familiar with that history, but I'm quite familiar with Corporate America. One thing I've seen is that when Engineering is great, it gives the company great momentum and allows the Management/"Business"/Strategy/etc functions to lag and get lazy. Good Engineering momentum essentially produces enough residual value for others to leech off from.

> that engineers were the most pragmatic I've ever seen, and the politicians were just...fucking idiots.

The engineers would have big problems if they spaceship doesn't work. The politicians are not idiots, its simply that they don't have the same goals as the engineers so the politicians seem like idiots to engineers.

> Had he not died in 1966, I suspect the Soviets would have beat the US to putting a man on the moon.

This is an false take. Many people have looked at this and it simply doesn't hold up. The resources they were investing was not big enough and having korolev couldn't have solved all the many problems they would have still faced.

They had some great engine technology but its a long way from there to the moon.

Stalin spent the latter half of his career killing all the talented politicians, whereas the engineers got left alone. Then the not-so-talented politicians that got left over (some of whom were not so bad) had to fight against a culture of fear, compulsive ass-covering, and magical thinking.

The only fucking idiot among top Soviet politicians was Gorbachev who sold one of the world's biggest economic, scientific and military powers just for 30 pieces of silver. His predecessors were no idiots at all. They are depicted as complete morons by the western propaganda - it's true. But propaganda and reality are two completely different things. I would advise you to learn history instead of blindly believing the yellow press and political articles on Wikipedia.