What is “the Soviet Union” what is “performance?” I assume “in” relates to the performance and interests during the war with a level of average bureaucratic or social movement blindness to future desires.
The Soviet People haven’t been mentioned so widows and the dead exist to the extent that “The Soviet Union” has an interest in them.
From the start date The Soviet Union was a contested state apparatus controlled by a party and a ruling class (partially comprised of the party), both of those levels of interest had internally diversified interests except as regards their survival as groups and their puissance as groups. A party vibe that desires puissance in one state is different to a party vibe with a mission for global (nomenklatura capitalism) socialist revolution is different to a party vibe which a mission for global rapid communisation under workers control. Historically survival of nomenklatura capitalism won these debates and The Soviet state survived. Historically the method of adjudicating between interests was the near total policy dominance of one position and the attempted social liquidation of other lines (in part by the physical liquidation of their advocates). We don’t ask about what is desirable (a political or moral issue) but what is variably plausible from the best readings of texts.
By the death of Lenin the capacity to extract feudal surplus in tax tithe and rent had been undermined by land distribution. No consumer industry or import route existed for voluntary enclosure. The urban working class was concentrated on top of the arsenals and had demonstrated independent political capacity, a willingness to liquidate ruling classes and a latent demand for bread. This latent demand will actualise and the two ways out are forced enclosure or the dissolution of the nomenklatura. As we have identified the Soviet Union as involving the nomenklatura forced enclosure will be required. The party was reluctant to antagonise the peasantry and waited until the working class actually threatened them in the Ural Siberian area. By this time specialist purges had already begun.
So any plausible Soviet Union will end up with five year plans, forced enclosure and purges of the party. What can it avoid? It can avoid incompetent forced enclosure. It can avoid famines resulting in mass death. It can avoid the prison-industrial gulag or the horror gulag, it can avoid hysteric purges. These *all* have economic costs which will reduce the rate of growth by channeling higher quality labour and nomenklatura into these areas. Think of Mikoyan not collectivising where a famine amelioration system is not in place and collectivisers being police-agronomists instead of police-incompetents. Think of Dzherzhinsky running a three tier gulag of prison farms for workers and peasants, gaol farms for thieves, and 1930 grade gulag and secret gulag for politicals. That’s a lot of competent managers taken from elsewhere: but, the absence of hysteria and mass mortality probably makes up a lot of the lost growth, taken from consumer and non heavy industrial. The Soviet Union can implement banishment to fish canning plants or “soft gulag” instead of destruction of managers. And imprisonment on farms instead of a high chance of death for workers and peasants.
The Soviet Union can avoid committing as if for a 1938 war in military design and training with iteratively tested weapons relying on field exercises and a better planned purge of the military which attacks exercise based incompetence over a board wipe. The Soviet Union can industrialise based on a “deep war” strategic concept which uses civil war experience of depth of strategic operations to lose less plant if invaded.
That’s about as far as the policy implications of macro-economics can take me. I see no option for other macro-economic lines coming into being due to the necessity of enclosure for continued nomenklatura class rule.