For example for your Manhattan project thing is the classic example of how misleading such simplified outlook on the world can be. GRU stole the information about US atomic bomb, but then the info wasn't really used (because it wasn't trusted) and the USSR bombs ended up being developed independently. See this post for more: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/21zc0v/how_d...

This is actually a rather common occurence - even in things like USSR copying the US bomber design it showed that the technology and approaches to it were suffciently different that stolen plans weren't really that useful for plain copying. They did provide invaluable direction for R&D of course.

Let me be clear - I'm not even remotely claiming that USSR didn't attempt to copy technology or attempt to benefit it. I'm just a bit annoyed at the amount of Americans that reflexively try to erase contributions and hard work of a lot of USSR's engineers and scientists with this naive and simple dismissal. I understand that it's driven by what's effectively 50 years of propagands (from both sides!), but in 2017 we should do better. We have declassified sources now.