That's because the Soviet leadership made the error to slip into the cold war confrontation, as a result, most of their science and industry was narrowly focuse

That's because the Soviet leadership made the error to slip into the cold war confrontation, as a result, most of their science and industry was narrowly focused on developing military hardware. The Chinese had Zhou Enlai, who made the effort to avoid such a turn of events (incidentially Zhou Enlai wasn't an engineer at all). However there were alternatives: once in office, Beria made an effort to get rid of East Germany, in an effort to end the cold war. However the rest of the polibureau ousted and executed Beria, because they feared that all this was too destabilizing (then they got the Hungarian uprising under Khrushchev, which was much worse; also Krushchev later fired his co-conspirators in the coup against Beria - Malenkov and Molotov) See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavrentiy_Beria#First_Deputy_Premier_and_Soviet_triumvirate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavrentiy_Beria#First_Deputy_P... I am not entirely sure about it, but the question of who is on top seems to make a big difference, when talking about a very authoritarian political system.