You mean “the downside of starting off as a poorly-developed state engaged in a multi-generation combination of outright war and proxy wars and military spending races with the most advanced countries in the world”.
And, as if the arms race of the Cold War did not involve choices made by the Soviets! Come off it. They could easily have chosen not to get dragged into an arms race. But instead they chose no only to play that game, but to then start quite a few expensive proxy wars... Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, a number of civil wars in Africa, Nicaragua, ... These were their choices.
Saying that "they are stupid because they were still communists" or that other countries were successful is moving the goal post.
Israel was a very special situation due to UN, Holocaust, ties to the West, etc. and USA is on outright easy mode in comparison because of their remote placement, size and abundance of everything and it has had tons of quiet time to develop and attracted the brightest people from the world for a while to come to live and work there. I'd say Japan or Prussia or Singapore were better sudden (under 100 years) success stories.
But they didn't achieve much in reality. That's why they have to copy most of their technologies from other countries during all their 70 years.
- a non-hungry society? NO
- wealthy society? certainly not
- advanced and commercially successful airliners? no (but you'll pick a nit here, I'm sure)
- advanced medicine? no (cue BS about how wonderful medicine is in Cuba, but still no)
- advanced computing devices? no, certainly nothing like those available in the West by 1991, much less anything since
- the Internet? NO
- putting a man on the moon? (hardly important, but) no
- a myriad of consumer products of varying technological content, from the trivial to the highly advanced? NO, see the first item
- how about... cars... anti-lock brakes, catalytic converters, airbags...? no
And who is the rest of the world? The USSR achieved a lot in comparison to Africa, South America, the Middle East, and SE Asia.
The US did not go through a long period of active direct and proxy conflict with the most advanced contemporary nations at it's founding. It fought a brief war to separate (which it was losing until a major power opposed to Britain intervened), and then not much with any major power till it decided to take advantage of the Napoleonic Wars and the pretext of impressment to seize British Canada (unsuccessfully). The US was a sideshow isolated by oceans for the major powers for almost as long after it's formation as the USSR existed.
Yes it did : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_Wars
Actually the Korean War was started upon strong insistence of Kim, Il Sung of North Korea. Sure Soviets gave the approval, but only reluctantly.