Mir Books – Books from the Soviet Era

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• Hacker News
• Anyone aware of any official/private efforts in China or Russia to digitize or republish these books. Nowdays, finding these books particularly in languages like Hindi is very difficult.
  by blackoil
• There are private efforts in Russia, but mostly they digitize Soviet-time books written in Russian or maybe in other languages spoken in Russia. (As far as I know, that is; I am, of course, not aware of the whole field.) Mir published in Russian too, but here it mostly printed translated works, a lot of scientifical and technical literature, a foreign sci-fi series and such. It was like a two-way enterprise, connecting USSR to the world.

  Officially all this does not seem to be supported in any way, I'm afraid.

  by Mikhail_Edoshin
• My favourite publisher from the 70's and 80's. Only a specific town in South India used to have a shop that sells Russian books and communist literature. Travelled to that town and bought a few chess books. "Domination in 2,545 Endgame Studies" by Gary Kasparyan was always in my hands.
  by zkmon
• Were they translated to Hindi or kept in their original language?
  by bawis
• Here is the book, https://archive.org/download/domination-in-2-545-endgame-stu...

  Maintainer/curator of Mir Titles here.

  by the-mitr
• Quick question.

  What do soviets make great researchers? I noticed this pattern in ml, math & physics research.

  Is it that they have better quality books?

  by asxndu
• mostly because people had no option to leave the country.

  also the salaries of scientists and engineers were notoriously shitty, so only those with passion for the subject studied it.

  by vlian2088
• I think part of it is that unlike in the US, access to education wasn't paywalled.

  Higher education in the US, with the exception of scholarships here and there, requires you to come from a wealthy background to afford the best schools.

  In other words, it's more about perpetuating class privilege than it is about developing the best and brightest of a generation. If you're a genius with poor parents, you have to really hope to get lucky enough to get a scholarship.

  In socialist societies, despite the claims often leveled against them, things were more meritocratic. If you're a genius with poor parents, you got access to the best education as that's what's optimal for society.

  by vrganj
• Russians consider their profession a calling and try to be the best at it. Makes big difference when it's calling and not just-a-job.

  I dunno what attitude russia's gen-z holds towards profession but in my time it was definitely considered a calling.

  by nullorempty
• Americans were great researchers at the time, as well. During the Cold War era, Soviet culture included an ambition to rival and surpass American research and technology.
  by Exoristos
• One word, "Culture";

  See the comment by "elzbardico" here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48738277

  Sadly, current-day global culture/society does not value knowledge if it is not in the furtherance of capitalistic goals.

  by rramadass
• Math and physics are more theoretical in curriculum and less students can grasp, but ones who do perform better. So, higher input filter, earlier talent detection. Western education is more applied to a business, Russian is more like a generic theory. This makes Western schools prepare to develop, Russian to research. Note this is a generic distinction, MIT and Stanford are higher standards and provide access to field practitioners so my take it is genuinely provide more quality than MSU or Baumanka alike.
  by kdmtctl
• Loosely related

  https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/06/why-so-many-top-hackers-...

  by ricardobayes
• They had a thing of encouraging talent and putting it in special schools to develop it. Then Maths reading groups etc.
  by physicsguy
• Competition. Nobody in the US cares about school math/physics/... olympiads. But they are/were a big deal in schools in the xUSSR.

  There also was no centralized test system (like SAT) up until early 2000-s. People had to go and sit on entrance exams in each university where they wanted to apply. But winners of olympiads got automatic admission into good universities.

  In addition, social sciences were a minefield in the USSR, especially subjects like political science or history. And hard sciences were safe.

  by cyberax
• i have very fond memories of mir books from my childhood, especially yakov perelman's outstanding maths and science for fun books.
  by zem
• I loved technical books from Mir publishers. Russian authors have a special place in my heart for explaining complex technical topics in concise yet engaging way.

  Books like Problems In physics by I E Irodov were my favourites

  by kumarvvr
• I wish this kind of soft diplomacy was more common today.

  It’s a lot cheaper than bombing schools.

  by rbanffy
• Well there's your problem. You can't grift the stock markets over a weekend with a shipment of books.
  by actionfromafar
• Soviet books were a boon to the world. I thank Soviet scientists.

  https://valeman.medium.com/the-men-who-translated-the-machin...

  by iamshs
• That is a pretty good and meaningful article.

  It was the same with many other countries, whether English or Native languages.

  by rramadass
• I had a lot of these books as a kid. I'm not even 100% why, but my dad glommed on to the idea that they were of high quality, and also quite inexpensive. Probably my favorite was "Higher Mathematics for Beginners" by Yakov Zeldovich[1]. I was a voracious reader, and largely taught myself calculus from it. Another one on probability and statistics I also found quite accessible (can't find it immediately).

  There were some other sketchier pop-sci books, I remember one that had the "water has structural memory" theory in it. But likely those didn't do any lasting damage.

  [1]: https://mirtitles.org/2022/07/04/higher-mathematics-for-begi...

  by raphlinus
• FYI - There is a later version of the above book titled "Higher Math for Beginners" (with Yaglom) and "Elements of Applied Mathematics" (with Myskis) - https://mirtitles.org/?s=zeldovich

  Hard copy versions are available from Aargon Press on Amazon India.

  by rramadass
• Highly recommend this is you ever need to study differential equations (I guess there may be still a reason for it?). Only thing that helped me pass the class

  https://archive.org/details/m.-l.-krasnov-a.-i.-kiselyov-g.-...

  by AFF87
• I taught out of this book at Tulane and while it is a good problem book, some of the concept transitions don't flow well and you need another book or to write some supplementary notes. Also the section on Jacobians is pretty clearly lifted straight out of Pontryagin's book
  by selimthegrim
• Very fond memories of Mir Publishers' science and math books growing up in India in the 80s and 90s. I think English translations were freely available in India. My grandfather would buy them for me to encourage my interest in science and math. If I could find physical copies of those books I would buy them in a heartbeat today.

  Slight digression: Russian cartoons from that era are also very interesting. One of my favorite short cartoon from that era (I still hum its music involuntarily): Ikarus and the Wise Men [0]

  [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Yk1mz23YFA

  by smath
• Anyone interested in Soviet-era anything could do worse than check out rutracker. It's pretty usable with in-browser translate. A lot of it is of course, just contemporary piracy of .ru and western media, but they have interesting archives too.
  by stefanjpm
• We used to get these books in the annual international book fair in Delhi back in my childhood days. I still have 2 of them (Mathematics Can Be Fun and How The Steel Was Tempered), but I'm pretty sure we had several more at the time. They were fun reads, and the illustrations used to be great!
  by hiyer
• We had these in Sri Lanka, some of it translated to the local language and published by local publishers. I can't remember whether it was specifically a Mir publication, but I have fond memories of Y. Perelman's Mathematics can be Fun -- beautifully printed and hardbound, with meticulously drawn line art illustrations covering various applications of mathematics.
  by hliyan
• https://mirtitles.org/?s=Yakov+Perelman

  All of Perelman's books are a must read, particularly by students. Few books can better motivate you in Science/Mathematics.

  by rramadass