All people in my extended family were Soviet scientists and engineers from multiple fields, and outside of experimental physics it was the same or worse. Same publish or perish pressure, same amount of fraud and lack of reproducibility. A ton of papers were made up. My father's lab lead was an absolute fraud (biochemistry), everybody knew that, and my father was unable to speak up until the late 90's.

When I was a kid I thought it was the issue with USSR rotting to the core (it was), but when it crashed and later when the web appeared, it became obvious that it's a common problem with academia and its incentives.