> If the country had never gone that direction it would have spent many more decades being a quasi-feudal land stuck the the middle ages

Capitalism was the end of such arrangements in the most developed parts of the world. Individualism helps since individual investors benefits from investing in better equipment making people more productive and thus helping living standards overall.

Social solutions to the same problem doesn't come close to being as effective at eliminating such inefficiencies. The main thing social solutions can do is provide baselines to the population such as education and healthcare as you say, but without capitalism to follow-up with targeted investments the country will remain poor even if its population is extremely educated. Social solutions are just very bad at using peoples talents well, they have a too collectivist view and don't see the individuals.

I remember how chattel slavery was very effective at making people more productive, and how Google is famous for how well it respects individual users when they have problems.

Many of those same peasants ended up dying in Soviet-era famines as well. I agree with you, the pre-communist revolution Russia was a living hell for many peasants, but it’s hard to say it was the “communist” aspect of the “communist revolution” that improved things, as opposed to the “revolution” aspect. What was needed was an overthrow of the existing power structures to enable modernization and industrialism, communist or not. Keep in mind other nations, like Japan, made even greater leaps out of feudalistic societies to modern economies. For Japan, it too required a dismantling of the existing power structures (first voluntarily at the turn of the century, and then by force after WWII), with no communism involved at all.

It’s possible communism had a uniquely positive influence on Russia’s transformation, but I remain skeptical considering it seems to be the only example of communism to ever to do so, the place from which Russia was coming, and the place in which it ended.