The Soviet system was clearly inferior (say it was running at 10-30% efficiency of a market system), but wasn't completely dysfunctional. Combine this with lar

The Soviet system was clearly inferior (say it was running at 10-30% efficiency of a market system), but wasn't completely dysfunctional. Combine this with large population population of the Soviet block, the fact that that population was effectively used as slaves at many times and also had very little consumption goods available (most output went into building out further industrializationn to catch up to the West as well as into military and propaganda projects, such as space race) and you can see how it still managed to cough up some respectable output, at the cost of misery of the people working behind it. However, as industrial processes became more complex and reliant on specialized high-level skills (such as in semiconductors or software), it was clear that the system has reached its limits and just cannot do these things well at scale. The rampant incompetence and nepotism were just not incompatible with things like modern chip factory.