Well, the country septupled its GDP over the 70 years of Soviet rule. For a time, between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of WWII it was one of the f

Well, the country septupled its GDP over the 70 years of Soviet rule. For a time, between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of WWII it was one of the fastest growing economies in world history. While facing terrible famine and hunger before WWII, the Soviet Union largely ended starvation by the mid-late century. The Soviet government managed to extend the benefits of sanitation, healthcare and electrification to tens of millions of the people living under its power. To me, while we might see many many problems within the Soviet economy and see many ways it could have been better, it is clearly not an economy that "didn't work". And by some measures, we can even say it "worked" better than the post Soviet economy.