[ddnb]

Exactly. Not to mention the Soviets were able to beat the US in almost all steps of the space race, starting with the first satellite as soon as 1957! I'd say what the soviet style of economic development was very good for was rapid industrialization from the ground up.

[pasabagi]

I'm sympathetic to this position, but I don't know if it's the whole story. Russia, before the revolution, was a country of extremes. On the one hand, there were farmers who were living in a similar manner to 5th century peasants. On the other, there were some of the largest industrial complexes in the world.

I think the Soviets did achieve incredible things, but I think that's largely the result of abandoning profit as the sole criterion of whether an activity is worthwhile: capitalist societies tend to spend most of their productive labour on keeping profitable hamster-wheels spinning (like the housing market, for instance).