Couldn't get to the moon. Most of their "achievements" were jokes. Gagarin bailed out of his capsule with a parachute & USSR lied about it to win prize.
Sputnik was barely functional. US took longer to get satellite, but it could actually do stuff besides beep the temperature.
They kept sending their best engineers to gulags when they didn't perform and were surprised when the rest didn't improve. Fear is not that great a motivator.
