Jeff Findley writes:

How the Soviets stole a space shuttle
Part 1: Moscow finds an online bonanza of information from U.S.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/18686090/#.UTUVkldZKM0

OK, so they *did* use all the publicly available data to save them work.
If this is "stealing" is probably up to interpretation...

One thing is clear: All in all they'd better not bothered with all of
this and saved a lot of rubles.

The launcher (Energia) was all their own work and very impressive to say
the least.


Jochem

--
"A designer knows he has arrived at perfection not when there is no
longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery