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Sure. U.S foreign policy prevented the Soviet Union from creating other communist regimes in Africa and Latin America. But! When you focus on the Soviet economy itself, you quickly realize that it could only collapse. https://twitter.com/EricMMrozek/status/1349405080664104966
There is this process that the economist Joseph Schumpeter called "Creative Destruction". It's basically when an outdated means of production is replaced by a new means of production. When industries modernize through the need for increased production or to be competitive.
Creative destruction did not exist within the Soviet Union. If you visited a Soviet coal mine during the early 90s they were still using the same machines and equipment that they had in the 1930s. There was no need to advance, modernize, or innovate industries.
Because there was no competition or any sort of market pressure. It was all quotas set by the state. The economic institutions of the Soviet Union were built in their entirety around committee top to bottom orders. In which committees decided on the basis of random variables...
...what was economic success and what wasn't. Such as production numbers, or weird statistical rises in the use of certain utilities. The result of this was complete mayhem. Factories produced chandeliers that were so heavy they could never be hung from a ceiling and were useless
but the committee would classify it as a success because an enormous amount of material was used in production. Factories kept machines running while producing nothing, just to increase the amount of electricity spent, so they could increase that statistic and call it success...
these industries were also what Ecemoglu would call extractive. Run by an elite (the party) with no accessibility or ability in economic participation through entrepreneurship to the wider public. Which produced basic goosd that never improved or evolved
you may have heard of the kitchen debate, which is when Chrustschov visited the U.S to brag about Soviet space race success. And Nixon responded with "You may have sent a man to space, but we will give every American a kitchen and color TV within the next 10 years"
And Nixon was correct. Companies had incentives to improve in the U.S and everyone could participate in the market on a level playing field. Allowing for creative destruction, improvement and development.
Whilst the Soviet economy as the 1970s rolled in, languished in complete stagnation. With no incentive to modernize, to improve, to create something new, the only things of value the Soviet economy could produce were things like Vodka and coal at the same rate they had in the 30s
Communism... basically created time bubbles. Things economically just remain stuck in the time when communism begins. Which in the case of the Soviet Union was the 1930s... which by the 1980s.. collapsed.
