While I agree with your stance on democracy (especially western liberal ones) I would not compare USSR economy or in general any communist country’s economy to western countries. This is different animal.

In communism economy is fake. People fake work, government (which owns everything) fakes paying them, fakes providing services. Taxes are fake because the wages are so low because government steals this money and then the money is just lost.

Military complex is enormous black hole which sucks all the capital from the economy. Military do not pay directly for any good or services it needs. If USSR wanted to move 5 armies 2000km for some propaganda set up exercise they just did that. Railways moved that stuff and never got paid for that. And it was in any case, any investment that went for military or general government stuff was just done and never paid. This whole type of economy is fake from the bottom to the top.