Kolmogorov graduated from university in 1925. The culture of post-revolutionary Soviet Russia in the early 1920s and of USSR during Brezhnev's "developed socialism" in the 1970s were so different as to be entirely incomparable.

The overall pattern over time: vastly less brutality and political violence, less insane unpredictability, more corruption and cronyism and cynicism, and much fewer paths for truly talented people to rise to the top.