Engineer from a regional institute received about 100 rubles, worker on a factory about 300 rubles (hehemon class), profesor up to 200 rubles, but profesors from top Moscow univs received 800-2000 rubles of hiden salary.
Supersonic speed doesn't violate laws of nature or violates casuality. Superluminal speed in matter just produces Cherenkov's radiation.
At superluminal speed, we will be able to hit photons in any order, including reverse order, or emit photons and catch them later. Why this is a problem for casuality?
It's possible to use waste heat to evaporate water, to make drinking water from salt water, but it's unpractical to build datacenter on a shore, or pump salt water uphil to a datacenter.
Soviet professors were poor, so it was easy to bribe them to get passing grade. To weed out bribers, some trickery was used by state, so bribers can pay for few years or cheat on tests and then fail an exam anyway. In my class, 36 enrolled, 11 graduated.
Later, people learned that and started to buy diploma: faster, cheaper, no risk of failing the final exam.