Unlike 99.999% of posters who praise free Soviet perks, I really lived in USSR in 80s, and can say life was quite hard. Things like healthcare were indeed free. They were also close to useless due to crumbling equipment, impossibility to get sufficient up-to-date information from outside of SU for continuous education of MDs (did anyone mention free education?), constant "defitsit" of medicines (actually it was almost total, everything was hard to buy starting from toilet paper).

If to speak specifically about computers we weren't forbidden from having PCs indeed, but it was almost impossible to buy one for many reasons, already mentioned defitsit being probably the most important, but also let's not forget the SU was lagging behind the West technologically, and had troubles fulfilling much more basic demands than computers. Most privately-owned computer hardware were self-made in 80s in USSR, and - I'm not kidding - you had at times to deal with very shadowy guys to buy necessary electronic parts. It's definitely easier to buy cocaine in today's US.

As for original research in the USSR it was buried by central-planned socialist system which never sufficiently rewards risk-taking (and there's no riskless innovations) so no matter how cool is your idea in theory it was always easier for everyone - from engineers to gov't ministers - to just copy Western examples (USSR didn't pay royalties anyway). Exceptions were only in military field, and in situations when USSR's industry was simply unable to copy.