Good old Russian engineering
Simple, strong, cost effective and effective. Their stuff may not be sophisticated compared to ours, but it works. There's a lot I could say about some of their systems but I'm not sure what is and isn't classified anymore. Discression is the better part of keeping my clearances (and my job).
Odds are an American engineer would've been tempted to reduce the amount of heat shielding to save mass and make the Soyuz "more efficient". Fortunately, the Russian engineers knew that a ballistic reentry was a possibility (for whatever reason) and allowed for it.