It was, for its middle decades. Culture is upstream from politics and economics.

USSR had the second-longest economic boom ever recorded, going from one of the poorest economies on Earth in the 1930s to the second-largest by the late 1960s. Savings rate of ~65%, and a surprising enthusiasm for risk-taking and innovation.

Then the culture tipped into failure mode, and everything else followed. Free market economies with failing cultures can limp along. Centralised, bureaucratic ones implode.

This oil shock will reveal what kind of culture and economic model the non-US West has.