It seems that Russia/USSR has always tried to take a short cut to establishing a vibrant economy through limiting wealth creation to the very top of the society. It failed in the 19th C, after WW1, after WW2, and after the collapse of the USSR. Russia seems to refuse to push wealth down to create a significant middle class. Tzarism is alive and well.
Russia has always missed the traditional entrepreneurial small company class: the godfather of tech innovations and synergies. Already for Czar Peter the Great the conservatism and immobility of "his" people was maddingly frustrating.
A history of rural nobility with peasants, and some courts in some cities. Enough nobility to lead wars, enough peasants to become soldier. But not much of the guild driven industrious wave that started in Europe in 1300 and generated a fabric of activities, that survived the traditional big industrial revolution companies (mining, coal, steel, chemistry, shipbuilding, car) and that were re-iginited when the traditional conglomerates reduced their manufacturing depth in the 60ies-70ies in the western countries.
Communism did improve a lot !
For a while.
And... is plan-economy to get from no-where to a decent base level of industry communism ?
Or is that plan-economy with an obedient population ?
If you look at all kinds of graphs of the period of the revolution to 1960, comparing to medium developed countries, the progress is impressive (though no "fast lane"). Or should I say until Brezjnew ?
Did the worker class, the peasant class really benefit ?
A steady job for steady poverty of which you don't die. Real wage growth no-where, although social/health care increasing. Average age not high.
A very high female labor force participation of around 50% starting in WW2 and continuing...
but also no good productivity increases... one of the main deficits of the Russia model.
Everybody worked to apathic exhaustion, and despite a very low fertility rate and population growth (high and deep female education + high labor participation) it took until the 60ies before food of 2,000 kcal/capita increased to 3,000 kcal/capita.
Russia is also an economy on the periphery of Europe since centuries, as it still is, also because of the big domestic distances.
I think that with Brezjnew the success potential of the traditional Russian plan-economy model came to an end.
Too difficult to plan in a central top-down way all those small entrepreneurial companies of the western economies in their endless process of picking up something new, being started, grow, getting consolidated ?
I think that from Brezjnew onward the capital investment waste rate became very high and the lack of focus on productivity improvement hurting more and more.
Basically an allocation issue of efforts and capital..