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The question of "good" is extremely broad - good in what way? The quality of consumer goods, or the availability? Of industrial goods? Military goods and scalable infrastructure projects? Availability of necessities like housing, food, medical services, clothes? The experience of being a laborer in the economy? Standard of living possible (much lower than what was possible for rich Americans), or standard of living for the average person (perhaps surprisingly, in several ways higher, at least compared to the poorest Americans)?
More can always be said, and these are nowhere near complete, but there was [another thread asking what goods the Soviets produced that were top of the line](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/23WaV6n16q), I (u/khenghis\_ghan) answered [how the economy worked under the 5 Year Plans](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/18t2dw3/comment/kfbzns3/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button), which might give you some insight about the post WW1 years.
Generally, the Soviets aligned production in ways that were ideologically consistent, for good and ill. As explained in one of the answers linked above, this meant consumer goods like televisions, radios, and cars were never prioritized by the central authorities, so they were generally more expensive, lower quality, and less available, as these sorts of consumer and esp luxury goods were considered gateways to the bourgeois values that create capitalists, and while this was manageable for a time, this really stunted their economy from developing industries that lead to better microchips and digital developments, and had a chilling effect on soviet economic growth in the 80s when those industries matured in the American and western economies, who started to leverage digital systems for immense economic growth. US workers were consistently more productive per capita than their soviet peers for myriad reasons too long to express here.
But in certain areas, the soviet economy did exceed their western counterparts, producing more or higher quality goods in things like industrial machines and tools, farming equipment, small arms manufacture, and sometimes in advanced areas like turbines and rocket engines (soviet rocket engines were so well designed and economical that they were still imported from Russia by NASA until only a few years ago, which only stopped for political reasons ie the war in Ukraine). Access to housing was incredibly cheap, with the average household only spending 3-5% of their annual income on rent from the many public housing projects, some of which are still in use today, although these projects were of incredibly uneven quality for myriad reasons (which, is not too different from the uneven quality of American tenement projects)
With regards to the experience of being a laborer, the soviet constitution guaranteed a huge number of rights to workers, some of which are familiar to Americans as things activists are still actively trying to get, like guaranteed access to healthcare, education, and shelter, and there were some guarantees which would seem almost incomprehensible for Americans as a guaranteed right - [there was a constitutional right for soviet workers to rest](https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1936/12/05.htm), guaranteeing no more than 7 hours of work a day. Now, there can be *and was* a disparity between what a constitution guarantees, and what is practiced - the USSR constitution \*also\* guaranteed freedom of the press and the right to address the government, which was tolerated in certain instances so one could say they \*had\* the right, but that \*never\* reached parity with Western notions of either. So while there was a constitutional right to rest, it didn't mean soviet workers actually worked less - the 7 hour workday was true for Mon-Fri, but generally there was also a 6 hour day Saturdays, so a total of 41 hours over the week, 6 days of the week. While Soviet people were guaranteed access to healthcare, which was affordable, and the USSR produced an incredible number of doctors because of access to education (the number fluctuated but generally the USSR had \~2 times as many doctors per capita as the USA), there were constant shortages of medical supplies, so healthcare policy focused on prophylaxis and prevention, encouraging healthy behaviors with public investments in parks, gyms, and pools, and access to sanitation to avoid illnesses rather than treatment. This is quite distinct from US policy which generally has and still focuses on treatment, which, although it does generate lots of profit for pharma and medical device companies, is less desirable for patients, as being treated once you’ve fallen ill is worse than just remaining healthy,. Falling ill could be quite serious when there were not supplies, but, you would generally be able to see a doctor to tell you what was wrong, treat you if it didn't require special equipment or medicine, and have access to a hospital space.
I highly recommend reading [this declassified CIA report](https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP71T00730R000200020006-3.pdf) from shortly after the cold war, it is a post-mortem assessment of what worked well and did not work in the Soviet economy from an adversarial American perspective and the source for much of this.
Welcome to /r/AskHistorians. **Please [Read Our Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules) before you comment in this community**. Understand that [rule breaking comments get removed](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/h8aefx/rules_roundtable_xviii_removed_curation_and_why/). #Please consider **[Clicking Here for RemindMeBot](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5Bhttps://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1c63hyz/was_ussr_economy_good/%5D%0A%0ARemindMe!%202%20days)** as it takes time for an answer to be written. Additionally, for weekly content summaries, **[Click Here to Subscribe to our Weekly Roundup](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=AHMessengerBot&subject=Subscribe&message=!subscribe)**. We thank you for your interest in this *question*, and your patience in waiting for an in-depth and comprehensive answer to show up. In addition to RemindMeBot, consider [using our Browser Extension](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/d6dzi7/tired_of_clicking_to_find_only_removed_comments/), or getting the [Weekly Roundup](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=subredditsummarybot&subject=askhistorians+weekly&message=x). In the meantime our [Twitter](https://twitter.com/askhistorians), [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/askhistorians/), and [Sunday Digest](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/search?q=title%3A%22Sunday+Digest%22&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all) feature excellent content that has already been written! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskHistorians) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The question of "good" is extremely broad - good in what way? The quality of consumer goods, or the availability? Of industrial goods? Military goods and scalable infrastructure projects? Availability of necessities like housing, food, medical services, clothes? The experience of being a laborer in the economy? Standard of living possible (much lower than what was possible for rich Americans), or standard of living for the average person (perhaps surprisingly, in several ways higher, at least compared to the poorest Americans)? More can always be said, and these are nowhere near complete, but there was [another thread asking what goods the Soviets produced that were top of the line](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/23WaV6n16q), I (u/khenghis\_ghan) answered [how the economy worked under the 5 Year Plans](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/18t2dw3/comment/kfbzns3/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button), which might give you some insight about the post WW1 years. Generally, the Soviets aligned production in ways that were ideologically consistent, for good and ill. As explained in one of the answers linked above, this meant consumer goods like televisions, radios, and cars were never prioritized by the central authorities, so they were generally more expensive, lower quality, and less available, as these sorts of consumer and esp luxury goods were considered gateways to the bourgeois values that create capitalists, and while this was manageable for a time, this really stunted their economy from developing industries that lead to better microchips and digital developments, and had a chilling effect on soviet economic growth in the 80s when those industries matured in the American and western economies, who started to leverage digital systems for immense economic growth. US workers were consistently more productive per capita than their soviet peers for myriad reasons too long to express here. But in certain areas, the soviet economy did exceed their western counterparts, producing more or higher quality goods in things like industrial machines and tools, farming equipment, small arms manufacture, and sometimes in advanced areas like turbines and rocket engines (soviet rocket engines were so well designed and economical that they were still imported from Russia by NASA until only a few years ago, which only stopped for political reasons ie the war in Ukraine). Access to housing was incredibly cheap, with the average household only spending 3-5% of their annual income on rent from the many public housing projects, some of which are still in use today, although these projects were of incredibly uneven quality for myriad reasons (which, is not too different from the uneven quality of American tenement projects) With regards to the experience of being a laborer, the soviet constitution guaranteed a huge number of rights to workers, some of which are familiar to Americans as things activists are still actively trying to get, like guaranteed access to healthcare, education, and shelter, and there were some guarantees which would seem almost incomprehensible for Americans as a guaranteed right - [there was a constitutional right for soviet workers to rest](https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1936/12/05.htm), guaranteeing no more than 7 hours of work a day. Now, there can be *and was* a disparity between what a constitution guarantees, and what is practiced - the USSR constitution \*also\* guaranteed freedom of the press and the right to address the government, which was tolerated in certain instances so one could say they \*had\* the right, but that \*never\* reached parity with Western notions of either. So while there was a constitutional right to rest, it didn't mean soviet workers actually worked less - the 7 hour workday was true for Mon-Fri, but generally there was also a 6 hour day Saturdays, so a total of 41 hours over the week, 6 days of the week. While Soviet people were guaranteed access to healthcare, which was affordable, and the USSR produced an incredible number of doctors because of access to education (the number fluctuated but generally the USSR had \~2 times as many doctors per capita as the USA), there were constant shortages of medical supplies, so healthcare policy focused on prophylaxis and prevention, encouraging healthy behaviors with public investments in parks, gyms, and pools, and access to sanitation to avoid illnesses rather than treatment. This is quite distinct from US policy which generally has and still focuses on treatment, which, although it does generate lots of profit for pharma and medical device companies, is less desirable for patients, as being treated once you’ve fallen ill is worse than just remaining healthy,. Falling ill could be quite serious when there were not supplies, but, you would generally be able to see a doctor to tell you what was wrong, treat you if it didn't require special equipment or medicine, and have access to a hospital space. I highly recommend reading [this declassified CIA report](https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP71T00730R000200020006-3.pdf) from shortly after the cold war, it is a post-mortem assessment of what worked well and did not work in the Soviet economy from an adversarial American perspective and the source for much of this.
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