People romanticising the idea of communism and USSR probably never lived under such a system or base their opinion on propaganda.
That being said, if teachers found you had a talent for engineering and you weren't from a blacklisted family, your life would be completely owned by the state. You would be brainwashed and manipulated to become the engineer the state wants and then as a reward sent off to a prison city living and working with other engineers for the rest of your life. One mistake, wrong comment about the regime and you would end up in the forest with a bullet in your head. That's why they had some impressive advancements here and there, but in the grand scheme of things USSR was just one big pile of steaming excrement.