And how is "American efficiency" achieved? Through free market economy and entrepreneurship. Soviet Union had neither of those; they had corporations owned by state and forced collectivization of agricultural goods. 5 year plan was modus operandi of Soviet Union not market forces or as Adam Smith would say "invisible hand".
free markets arguably play a relatively minor role. What the Soviets were after, and what many Americans actually directly provided was scientific management and scaling operations to industrial size. Taylorism enjoyed particular popularity in the Soviet Union, and one of Taylor's chief disciples, Hugh Lincoln Cooper, was actually directly hired by the Soviet Union together with numerous American engineers and workers and General Electric to build the, at the time, largest Hydroelectric power station in the world in the Soviet Union[1].
This kind of expertise is what the Soviets were after and it is also what has made the US successful. The free market is overrated and you can see it if you go to any underdeveloped country. There's free-markets galore, some of the poorest countries on earth have nothing but free-markets.
American efficiency is the result of producing firms that can organize themselves and implement huge projects at scale effectively. No markets within a firm and usually they're not very free either.
I was speaking about Economy of the Soviet Union not about particular industrial projects or particular state firms. Free market forces are supply and demand coupled with private ownership and private entrepreneurship.
