Indeed this was my original point way above, though I would postfix it by saying, as I did also, above, that the Soviet planning system was a failure and Stalin a tyrant. The original claim of TFA was just pure nonsense. You can't explain a Russian's lack of a car in the rubble of 1948 Stalingrad based on "Soviet communism bad, American capitalism good"

You can probably make that claim in 1975, though. Unfortunately people are not reading that far down into my comment to get the distinction.