The level of growth experienced by the SU was unsurpassed. In the 50s the US media was fretting over it being "too successful".
The U.S. went from agrarian society to the first spacefaring society to make it to the Moon, and became the most powerful nation on earth, in ~40 years.
The issue is not that the Soviets didn't develop: it's that they didn't develop as quickly as they could have, had their central planning not retarded their growth rate. Not to mention their utterly murderous regime.
Even if centralised planning is doomed to retard growth rates(a hypothesis I consider quite plausible), you cannot reasonably confirm that hypothesis, or the extent of the retardation, using the example of Soviet Russia. There were too many factors involved for you to lay so much of the blame on centralised planning.
There were multiple geopolitical and economic factors involved, including the fact that USSR was trying to match the military and diplomatic might of an economy triple its size, fought wasteful wars(Wars are a centralized decision in almost all modern countries) and suffered from variations in the rates of global commodities. These factors alone would most likely decimate a country no matter what its economic system.
It's pretty remarkable that after 30 years consistently growing much faster than the United States, in 1990 the USSR economy was still half as large!
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/01/sov...
Had the Tories had their way in the 40s (and without a clear example of success to point to, they may have), the UK would now have an insurance based "show me the money and we treat you" system - the exact kind which Americans are all apparently very happy with.