I wonder if part of the disconnect is that we're comparing the wrong countries. Even at their peak, the USSR was a much poorer country than the US or Germany.

Many of the differences we blame on a command economy may be either caused by, or exaggerated by, the wealth gap. The US could afford to make both bombs and toilet paper, but the USSR couldn't. It would be interesting to compare Soviet quality-of-life and achievements to a free-market country of similar per-capita GDP.

The "clone the West" decision process at least did build some knowledge, infrastructure and manufacturing base. In contrast, there are plenty of wealthy Western countries with no meaningful semiconductor or electronics industry, because they could just buy American/Japanese/Korean gear.