>'Isolated from Western advances in antibiotic production in the 1940s, Russian scientists continued to develop already successful phage therapy to treat the wounds of soldiers in field hospitals. [..] However, due to the scientific barriers of the Cold War, this knowledge was not translated and did not proliferate across the world.[16][17] A summary of these publications was published in English in 2009 in "A Literature Review of the Practical Application of Bacteriophage Research"'
2. Electronics: Léon Theremin work in the Soviet Union which is the basis of RFID technologies [1] [2].
3. History: Knorozov work deciphering the Mayan glyphs. He work put modern Mayan studies on a firm foundation. [3]
4. Physics: Much of the developments in dynamical systems came from "the Moscow School":
>"A more abstract approach, developed in Moscow, gained attention outside the U.S.S.R. via the translation of (Nemytskii and Stepanov, 1960), introduced by S. Lefschetz, who had himself published a text on qualitative theory a few years earlier (Lefschetz 1957). Here the first clearly-defined strange attractor – the solenoid – was described. The works of Kolmogorov, Anosov, Arnold and Sinai grew out of this "Moscow school" in the 1950-60's, with important work on ergodic theory (Sinai, 1966), geodesic flows (Anosov, 1967) and billiards (Sinai, 1970), using Kolmogorov's idea of K-systems. Some of this was motivated by S. Smale's visit to Moscow in 1961, during which he met Anosov, Arnold and Sinai and told them of the conjecture that structurally stable systems with infinitely many periodic orbits could exist (see Smale's Horseshoe, below)." [4]
5. Computer Science/Complexity Theory: "The concept of NP-completeness was developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s in parallel by researchers in the US and the USSR."
The list is very long and I don't have all day so I'm stopping here but people living in the Soviet Union made many important scientific achievements. This is not an endorsement of the Soviet Union (see Theremin's poor treatment).
>Not sure that many people are using deciphered Mayan glyphs in their daily routines.
This gets to a question about the value of history. I find history exceptionally valuable to society, but you may disagree.
>This is good, but I've asked about achievements "made in USSR" which ordinary people still use in their daily lives.
Lets ignore Bacteriophages while we are at it. Yes, they improved countless peoples health and yes this research is used in biology, but US biotechs have met difficulty commercializing this treatment in the US because while it saves lives it is hard to monetize (IP issues). But hey, if you get a MR bacterial infection you might be happy that other options exist. [0]
That leaves three things people continue to use in their daily lives:
1. RFIDs,
2. Complexity Theory (you are using it right now),
3. and Dynamical Systems advances (as seen in aircraft, boats, cars, medical devices, electronics, etc...).
>'Isolated from Western advances in antibiotic production in the 1940s, Russian scientists continued to develop already successful phage therapy to treat the wounds of soldiers in field hospitals. [..] However, due to the scientific barriers of the Cold War, this knowledge was not translated and did not proliferate across the world.[16][17] A summary of these publications was published in English in 2009 in "A Literature Review of the Practical Application of Bacteriophage Research"'
2. Electronics: Léon Theremin work in the Soviet Union which is the basis of RFID technologies [1] [2].
3. History: Knorozov work deciphering the Mayan glyphs. He work put modern Mayan studies on a firm foundation. [3]
4. Physics: Much of the developments in dynamical systems came from "the Moscow School":
>"A more abstract approach, developed in Moscow, gained attention outside the U.S.S.R. via the translation of (Nemytskii and Stepanov, 1960), introduced by S. Lefschetz, who had himself published a text on qualitative theory a few years earlier (Lefschetz 1957). Here the first clearly-defined strange attractor – the solenoid – was described. The works of Kolmogorov, Anosov, Arnold and Sinai grew out of this "Moscow school" in the 1950-60's, with important work on ergodic theory (Sinai, 1966), geodesic flows (Anosov, 1967) and billiards (Sinai, 1970), using Kolmogorov's idea of K-systems. Some of this was motivated by S. Smale's visit to Moscow in 1961, during which he met Anosov, Arnold and Sinai and told them of the conjecture that structurally stable systems with infinitely many periodic orbits could exist (see Smale's Horseshoe, below)." [4]
5. Computer Science/Complexity Theory: "The concept of NP-completeness was developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s in parallel by researchers in the US and the USSR."
The list is very long and I don't have all day so I'm stopping here but people living in the Soviet Union made many important scientific achievements. This is not an endorsement of the Soviet Union (see Theremin's poor treatment).
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Theremin#Return_to_t...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Knorozov#Key_research
[4]: http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/History_of_dynamical_sys...
[5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cook%E2%80%93Levin_theorem#Con...