>>18066061 (OP)
Honestly, Communism worked well in the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc only because they have abundant hydroelectric energy, oil and gas, and iron deposits. And a bunch of very intelligent scientists and engineers
If a country like Guatemala, Laos, or Burkina Faso tries communism it will fail because they're too dependent on the capitalist global trade system to make modern goods
Overall, the Dengist approach is the most realistic approach to achieving and maintaining a socialist state. If the Soviet Union partially liberalized like Deng but maintained the Party's leading role in society it would still be around.
The thing is that the Soviet bureaucratic class was afraid of change after Khruschev, Hungary, and Czechslovak revolts and wasn't visionary enough. They weren't able to exploit their advantages to pull ahead of the western world
The Soviet Union had a scientist called Viktor Glushkov that was very innovative and forward thinking, who proposed a national computer network 15 years before ARPANET, thought about electronic system of payments, and began an automation of production in steel mills, computerized supply chains, and economic statistics calculation. His ideas were never fully funded because it could detect corruption and stop embezzling of state products. If the Soviet Union spent more on computers and less on conventional forces it could have emerged as a global leader of computing