Well, they were despised occupying army, but the people there are not morons. They were first in space, they had some really great inventions, they had really good scientists and artists… Maybe it’s that I am younger and can look at them with more objective view…
Or it’s just the way I was raised… I remember my father (who is an university lecturer) was in some panel on the scientific conference. And it just happens that everyone in that panel were graduates from some postgrad studies in Leningrad. But the times were new (it was early 2000s) and they all demanded to be introduced that they were studying marketing and economy in St Petersburg…
My father looked at them, sighed and told “Well, it seems that I was the only one who was in the same time in Leningrad studying economy of socialism” 
So as you can see in my family we don’t try to despise Russians everywhere where it is possible. There were some good things and there were bad things…
Also, another anecdote: My father is a great fan of russian traditional music. When he was jailed during martial law for his political activities it so happened that he was in the same cell with some opera singer jailed for the same. And they were spending time singing all this classic russian ballads and romances together for the other inmates… The political police could make anything out of it: how is that, this guys are jailed for fighting communism and they spend all their time singing russian songs and reading Lenin (when in jail, my father had read the whole lot of Lenin works, as there was not much choice in the library 
)
As for the items: I had soviet made electronic alarm clock. It was the noisest one, it was very hard to switch it off and it lasted about 25 years until during some party one of my drunk visitors decided to check if it’s really indestructable - it wasn’t, but it took him really hard time to destroy it (yet I still managed to fix it, but it has some errors since and was getting frozen).
I still have my Zenit B camera, and I think it is a great classical tool.
Very good optic, and, again, it’s indestructable (i dropped it several times and it still works fine).
My father still rides his old Ukraina bicycle, he is a big guy and he already damaged two modern bikes. This one is indestructable, even the wheels had to be centered only few times and this bike has more than 25 years now…
Also there is a pump for pumping car wheels (but no the feetpump, it’s rather biccycle style one like this one:
My father keeps it of sentiment, as it was his first one when he was riding a motorbike in 50’s… Last time I’ve been in Poland I got a puncture in the bicycle and needed a pump, found only that one… Works perfect, and its made in 1952 in Soviet Union…
I have my amplituner Diora Kleopatra Hi Fi with me in Scotland, this one is actually Polish… It has some lamps and pre-conductors in it, and the sound quality is amazing, very old school plush sound, everyone who comes to my place is amazed with it…
My father has a set of good old soviet tools in his garage… He also has some new ones, but all the new ones are incomplete, as some tools snapped or broke… The soviet one still looks as brand new.
I also have my pocket folding knife, made in Soviet Union… I carry it with me when on the road… I once forgot to take it out of my backpack when had to go to the court, and they told me to throw it away, but I begged them to keep it for me…
My father was driving one car for a long time, a 1970 Trabant 601. It was in our family from 1979 to 1996 and then a family friend bought it and was driving it for another 4 years or so… We went around the clock four times, so including the first owner (who drove all around Europe in it, he was allegedly even in Barcelona with this car), the car had well over 500 000 km on the clock when we sold it… Yet I remember we had a technical problem only once, but my father managed to fix it on the roadside in 20 minutes (with a little help from the wee electrical workshop in the village we happened to break down).
My uncle used to run independent garage, he said that during his over 40 years career of car mechanic, he never-ever heard about Trabant that had gearbox problems… He was also a rally driver, and he always was saying that he was racing Fiat, his friend was racing Porsche, and after every rally, they had to split car in part and fix everything. Their friend was racing on Trabant, and while they were lying under their cars, he was just changing tires and going to the next rally, so despite that he usually had much worse results, as he had much poorer car, he was still going steady with them, as when they were on one rally getting 5 points, he was able to do two rallies and get 2 or 3 points on each…
As for rallies - it’s Kamaz that won most of Paris-Dakar rallies in history, and I think Tatra was not far behind…
Tatra is the king of the off road trucks as well - look that all modern military trucks, even from leading manufacturers are very similar to this design:
So as you can see from these examples some of the Eastern Bloc products were very good quality, despite popular opinion (which was not so bad, as many of these products were crap, but we just should not tar them all with the same brush).
Carryfast:
I see you noticed the point. The Soviet idea is to make CHEAP and Reliable vehicles. Altough you are off course wrong as usual: brand new Kamaz tipper nowadays costs about 40 000 pounds:
otomoto.pl/kamaz-6540-8x4-T2391618.html
But it has to be expensive if it is to meet modern vehicle emission norms.
18 years old you can get for 2000 pounds, as this is not Australia, but European Union and here the exhaust emissions matter. Also you have to remember that they are cheap, because there is literalry milions of them (two milionth truck was build around 2009 IIRC). They are built since 1976 and the factory has capacity of nearly 100 000 trucks per year.
But every tipper company in Poland has some Kamaz or Tatra, or at least phone number to someone who has one handy. Because, believe or not, where the modern vehicles can’t go, these ones will manage no problem. You got a big builder that has to be moved but it’s too heavy for ordinary tipper? Call KAMAZ. Etc.
This is true for many other soviet vehicles… My friend’s father used to plough his field with UAZ jeep when his tractor broke down… Try this with Range Rover…
It’s not the random thing that in UK these, who really need a working horse use Land Rover Defenders and not Discoverys for example. Because they are based on the same principles as most of soviet motoring industry was: simple, strong and reliable.
.Which is why Israel still exists.
