But I say sell some Perrys and Spruances to Taiwan to see the old Red bastards in Beijing sweat.
It would help if apples are compared with apples and pears were compared with pears. Soviet design philosophy ranked saftey and robustness over efficiency and comfort. Tu-134 and Tu-154s have been flown for decades in the kind of harsh weather than no western airliner is permitted to fly in and are extremely tough to boot too. Soviet pilots also had to train much longer than their western counterparts before they were allowed to pilot regular passenger flights. The reason for most of the Tu-154 crashes in the last decade is down to the lack of cash in and the degradation of the support infrastructure. The Soviet flight saftey record is quite good. Their airliners are also built with a larger number of flight cycles in mind.
As for 'russian workmanship', Hitler was given a tour of a captured Russian T-34s shortly after operation Barbarossa commenced. The T-34 had dozens of hits from german panzers, none of which had disabled it save a luck hit to the tracks. Hitlers only comment was something along the lines of 'it's not very well built is it?' before he parted.
VRN