Actually they really supported innovations, maybe not the way like it supposed to be when you pursuing to receive economican benefit from R&D, but it's because political interests occupied first, second and third places, economy questions was on fourth place in good days.

There were no arms conversion, so economy didn't take any benefit from beautiful minds behind the scenes.

To some extent the engineering prowess comes from experience gained from trying to sidestep the effects of the Soviet economic and political system (which in fact encouraged and supported inovation, but only as long as such innovation didn't disrupt the system itself).