On the scale that the CIA said the average citizen of the USSR ate better than their counterpart in the US[1], while still having a lot of science and engineering going on. Material conditions in the USSR improved dramatically after WW2. A lot more than, say, here in Brazil, where we never had a communist regime though we did have a US-backed dictatorship
[1]: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP85M00363R0006014...