I was born in the Soviet Union, read book about Soviet economy and political system (albeit not scientific ones) and have a different take. Corruption is a broad term and one can probably say it was a contribution factor, but may take is that inefficiency of economy and misguided foreign policy (including Afghanistan invasion) were the fatal flaws.
When selecting who to delegate power to, all soviet leaders selected people who are loyal to them and suitable for the job. Loyalty was more important than competence so government was full of incompetent people, but competence was not a disqualifying factor so some of them was able to do the job.
In Putin's power structure people who not steal and cannot be easily blackmailed are not promoted high enough. Being not corrupt _is_ a disqualifying factor. Putin at least in the beginning of his career maintained visibility of a country with the rule of law, so instead jailing opponents on a whim he jailed them for breaking the law, but the law was enforced selectively only for ones who are not fully loyal.
As a result in modern Russia personal enrichment is a much bigger problem that it was in Soviet Union. Soviet nomenklatura [1] was rich compare to poor population but their quality of life was not much better than for upper-middle class in the US. The same nor the case for modern Russia.
Failure of soviet economy as I know was not result of corruption - much more resources were wasted than stolen. Unfortunately I cannot provide any sources here - all I read was in Russian and I cannot find translations to English.
I've seen this inefficiency myself in form of many thousands tons of trees which were cut so harvesting organization would meet KPI for amount of harvested wood but left to rot in the forest because an organization which should transport the wood had not enough capacity to do this (but likely transported all volume on paper, which you may say is corruption, but resources were wasted, not stolen).
When selecting who to delegate power to, all soviet leaders selected people who are loyal to them and suitable for the job. Loyalty was more important than competence so government was full of incompetent people, but competence was not a disqualifying factor so some of them was able to do the job.
In Putin's power structure people who not steal and cannot be easily blackmailed are not promoted high enough. Being not corrupt _is_ a disqualifying factor. Putin at least in the beginning of his career maintained visibility of a country with the rule of law, so instead jailing opponents on a whim he jailed them for breaking the law, but the law was enforced selectively only for ones who are not fully loyal.
As a result in modern Russia personal enrichment is a much bigger problem that it was in Soviet Union. Soviet nomenklatura [1] was rich compare to poor population but their quality of life was not much better than for upper-middle class in the US. The same nor the case for modern Russia.
Failure of soviet economy as I know was not result of corruption - much more resources were wasted than stolen. Unfortunately I cannot provide any sources here - all I read was in Russian and I cannot find translations to English.
I've seen this inefficiency myself in form of many thousands tons of trees which were cut so harvesting organization would meet KPI for amount of harvested wood but left to rot in the forest because an organization which should transport the wood had not enough capacity to do this (but likely transported all volume on paper, which you may say is corruption, but resources were wasted, not stolen).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomenklatura