The really funny thing about that idea about the Soviet space program was that it was a complete myth! We now have access to their secret archives and they blew up far more rockets than we did! They just did not put their space program failures on National TV like us so everyone could watch them blow up rocket after rocket like us.
We now know their space program was one of build and try to launch rapidly, down and dirty, and cheap. If it explodes, "OK, Da, great! Find out why and fix that, launch the next one in two or three weeks. When that one explodes, find out why and fix that, rinse repeat, over and over again. Keep at it until it doesn’t go BOOM. AND, Keep it simple, stupid. You want more power? Easy, strap on more rockets.
Everyone was military, safety was second, third, or even last.
Except for the Soviet disregard for safety, Elon Musk is modeling their experiment to fly with SpaceX; don’t worry about blowing up rockets. Why? It works. Launch, crash, go BOOM? Fine. A crash or BOOM provides one more way that needs fixing. Figure it out, fix it, launch again, find the next oops.
True, it was a brute force development program... but the fact remains that in the end it did work and they ended up with some of the most powerful reliable launch systems.
And further, their systems continued to work once we had to retire STS. A lot of the recent and current US space launch systems fly on ex-Russian/Soviet liquid fueled rocket motors.