The USSR/Russia had it's own many decades long R&D programmes. We know for a fact SpaceX has benefited from NASA expertise because Elon has said so repeatedly

The USSR/Russia had it's own many decades long R&D programmes. We know for a fact SpaceX has benefited from NASA expertise because Elon has said so repeatedly and often, and the experienced designers and engineers he hired in the early days, some of whom are still there, cut their teeth in "old space". That's aside form the fact that much of what SpaceX has done has depended on NASA funding, including the couple of billion for lunar Starship.