alt Hacker NewsBut they simply weren't able to sustain it.
In the West, while the military industry initially pushed computer development, private companies quickly adapted those technologies for the consumer market. Over time, the Western consumer market became vastly larger than the military one.
In the USSR, this cross-pollination wasn't possible because anything that even touched the military was immediately classified as a state secret. This obsession with secrecy even affected civilian infrastructure like nuclear power plants. Plant operators weren't fully trained on how the systems worked under extreme conditions, and they were kept completely in the dark about inherent design flaws—because in the Soviet system, everything was by definition perfect and superior to the West.
Furthermore, because the consumer market was strictly controlled by the government and the party, the Soviet economy lacked any organic market signals regarding what people actually wanted or needed. Apparatchiks had to look elsewhere for data, so they resorted to copying Western solutions—sometimes just copying the basic concept (like a radio where users could choose their own stations), and sometimes cloning the entire machine.
While Soviet scientists had some highly innovative and interesting ideas in the beginning, central planners eventually decided it was faster and easier to copy a Western solution that was already 5, 10, or 15 years ahead in mass production.
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Three more factors matter a lot, and get missed.
The first is corruption. When the Iron Curtain fell, every country behind it suffered from corruption. The Russian word for how it worked was блат, pronounced blat. When the official way of doing things doesn't work, the way that works is informal favor trading. I have a friend, who knows a friend, etc. This acts as grit in the economic system, and makes everyone less productive.
The second was the pressure to not stand out too much. One proverb is Инициатива наказуема, pronounced initsiativa nakazuema. It translates to, "Initiative is punishable."
Why? Well, imagine that you're a middle manager. It's a dog eat dog world. You know that everyone below you, wants your job. Everyone above you, knows that you want their job. You got your role by sucking up to the people above you. Those below you, got theirs by sucking up to you. You don't want your employees to be utterly incompetent - then you won't be able to look good. But you also don't want any of them to shine - then your boss might think that they should have your job. This encourages bland mediocracy. Everyone strives to be just good enough for their job, while sucking up well enough to keep it.
The result is a kind of learned incompetence. But a nation filled with this kind of incompetence, will be unable to sustain innovation.
The third is alcoholism. Russia is basically a very large, very dysfunctional, alcoholic family. It is hard to overstate how true that is. The most popular vodka at the end of the Soviet era came in 750 ml bottles, that did not have a resealable cap. Because no true Russian would leave a bottle half-full. Anyone who didn't drink, was odd. A group that got together without drinking might be suspected of plotting revolution. This is yet another drag on Russian society.
Sounds simple. Would you also have a story to explain why Europe never managed to develop an independent IT industry either?
I think it's a bit different.
USSR just wasn't rich enough to afford experimentation and innovation. Resources (including human brain power) were quite limited. So they had to copy proven solutions. Simple as that.
It's easy to judge them in the retrospective. But they had to make decisions, using the information the had at the moment, weighing risks as they saw them at that moment.