It was massively successful
So much that it ended up industrializing USSR in a single generation from rags to somewhere in between 2nd and 1st world standards by 1960s. Whereas their ancestors were living in downtrodden village houses, 1960s Soviets were moving into massive apartments.
Which, as Noam Chomsky tells us, had JFK administration scared living daylights out of them. And that is the biggest proof of how good USSR's economy worked at that point:
Internal memos of JFK administration say that USSR was developing too rapidly, and if this goes on "
other countries could take after their example and try independent development". And therefore 'something' should be done about that.
Independent in the phrase "independent development" is the keyword here. Its a politically correct term of saying that "they wont sell their resources to us to exploit".
Meaning, these countries could follow socialist policies and therefore would not let US corporations to privately own and use their resources, and even could leave US sphere of influence. And this was 'bad' for US.
This wasn't some new thought then. It was called "domino theory" and it was around for some time. But in 1960s, the policy makers in US got really scared.
Hence, three things were done:
1 - Kennedy administration started a space race in a cocky manner to push USSR to waste their GDP
2 - Totally without fanfare and public knowledge, Kennedy administration also started an
arms race with USSR to have them waste their GDP
3 - An intent of 'making an example of' a country to show entire world what would happen if any country tried independent development was put into action
#3 hit Vietnam.
US bombed it with agent orange to make sure that 'nothing would grow on its soil'. The genocidal bombing campaigns US undertook, is incredible, and they still plague the population even today:
Laos: Thousands suffering from the deadly aftermath of US bomb campaign
In the end these happened:
- USSR had allocated almost all of its GDP to arms race and space race, therefore neglecting consumer sector. This had created the discontent that led to the dissolution of USSR.
- USSR had become a massive juggernaut in military and space despite not being able to command ~75% of the world's resources like USA through its sphere of influence. Until ISS was constructed, the world was still using Russian space station for space research, and even today basically Russia is the maintainer of the station with their spacecraft. This also points out to the fact that USSR's planning worked very well in maximizing the results of putting their entire economy into military-space race.
- Vietnam was totally destroyed, made a dysfunctional, destroyed state, which took decades to recover from. A good 'example' was made for any country who could attempt to try Soviet model.
- USA also put heaps of money into military-space race, creating the biggest military machine in the world (also wasteful), and basically went bankrupt - its effects was delayed by repeal of financial regulations back in early 1990s, which freed Wall Street to basically scam the world with financial tools and delay the eventual crash, which surfaced in 2008. But they took entire world down with them via the scam Wall Street pulled. We are all suffering from its results now. Ah, and also debt ceiling for US govt. debt still keeps increasing.
So basically, USSR's command economy and 5 year plans worked VERY well. But the problem with these was that, in case the planners focus on something too hard, whichever sector that's neglected goes kaput. If they successfully juggled arms-space race AND consumer sector, the world map would still have a country named USSR today.
