It’s disingenuous to blame all problems our countries had before 89 on socialism, while ignoring the constant blockade and attack from the Western European countries and the US.
I'm not blaming everything on socialism though. Russia was not very developed before the revolution, and it suffered terrible losses in WWII.
I’m less familiar with the USSR’s policies on this, but I can tell you România tried to export to the west and took on an IMF loan to do so. Then we were blocked from actually selling our exports and the loan was required to be paid early and in full regardless. Since we were only allowed to export food for the most part, rationing had to be used for several years. This economic crisis, in addition to constant propaganda via radio and funding of fascists, is part of how the US and its allies made the 89 coup successful.
Later on China and Vietnam did manage to negotiate an in-between position with some markets and some free trade (and in the case of Vietnam even IMF loans), but with workers as a class maintaining control of the state and significant parts of the economy continuing to be mostly planned by state-owned enterprises.
So it didn’t help that a developing economy had to redirect a sizeable portion of its productive power towards defence. Nor did the constant less direct attacks from the US and its allies. Despite all of that, average workers had good conditions even when compared to the US itself.
In the end it was the sacrifice USSR which enabled USA and UK (lots of Uniteds here) to claim victory. As a thank you, the west invested considerable resources into rebuilding Germany and Japan while giving the USSR and China the middle finger and immediately treating them like enemies.
We really did kick Russia and China while they were down, repeatedly, then spit on them.