USSR was never efficient. People literally did not care about their jobs. Especially after stalinism ended, many did the absolute minimum. Since everything was

USSR was never efficient. People literally did not care about their jobs. Especially after stalinism ended, many did the absolute minimum. Since everything was state owned it was owned by nobody - so nobody cared about maintenance, workers often stole from their companies, did not show to work because they stood in queues.. They had sayings like: "doesnt matter if you lie or stand,you will get 3 thousand at the end" (what meant that there were no rewards for those who worked harder). There could have been some islands of efficiency (perhaps in closed cities where workers could get accused of being spies if they didnt try hard enough) but for generic workers efficiency did not matter. And I dont even write about inefficiencies of central planned system itself, where rewards did not come from market forces + falsified statistics on top, so nobody even knew the truth. Even the communists knew that their system is inefficient, which you can see in many places. For example in "aquarium" novel by Suvorov one of the spies talks how they run out of meat and bread, but the system got so inefficient that it run out of people to murder. USSR didnt work people harder. Political prisoners yes, but the normal people were incredibly ineffective. Even films made during communism laughed at that.