I've been reading a book called Red Plenty by Francis Spufford recently about the Soviet economy recently, specifically about the period in the 1950s/early 1960s when the Soviet Union was registering the fastest growth rates in the world and some fantastic innovation which it couldn't then put into practice because of one disasterous Stalinist legacy system after another. It's a great book and was reviewed favourably by pretty much everyone
(There's a good interview with him at the Little Atoms podcast about all this which is worth listening to)
Anyway, it struck me as being good inspiration for an alternate history Cold War, or even a research path that lets the Soviet Union catch up if they're willing to put the work in...
The Soviet Cybernetic movement could be a research path in it's own right - maybe lots of expensive and apparently useless researches that lead to a series of wonders and scientific parity with the west.
One wonder might be the "Kantorovich Equations" - Kantorovich was a cyberneticist who worked to make the Soviet industrial base more efficient. A few years later his mathematical equations were independently discovered by an American and now form the basis of most corporate supply chains.
Another might be Akademgorodok, a wonder which would be placed in Novosibirsk or built by the player - a kind of computer science hothouse built by the Soviet bloc which created some amazing advances in computers and economic management which, again, couldn't be put into practice by the old paranoid men at the top.
I wonder if you could present a choice for the Soviets - a long, difficult research path that leads to a more functional consumer economy or one that gives them a lot of good military units in the midgame -the successful early Vietnam era Migs, etc. If the second "easier" research path also helps keep the people "happier" somehow, that would make the choice more complicated.
You'd present the Soviet Bloc with two paths - one would present the possibility of a mid game knockout blow against NATO held back by economic and social chaos at home (collapsing in 1989, possibly...) and the second would be a more difficult path to a functioning economy which would be repaid by a series of major economic and scientific wonders in the late game, which combined with all those oil resources would create an economic juggernaut. I think that would work very well with your limited improvements idea.
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