Some Soyuz design decisions were surely off the mark :) . Like, diameter of the capsule - when they tried to squeeze into a particular rocket (fairing?) diameter while having good enough aerodynamics while solid surface-to-volume ratio.
On the other hand, the whole craft weight just above 7 tons - and that's with almost 9 cubic meters of internal volume, and lots of systems still using analog electronics. And, by the way, without toxic propellants in the capsule. Granted, today one can - and should - do better. We'll see.
compare with : http://www.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/ima...
(and that is the 21th century "TMA" version where "M" stands for modernized and "A" for anthropometric :)