system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How was the Soviet Union, despite being so poor that people were starving to death in famines, rival the US for the better part of a century?
gpt
The Soviet Union had no famines after 1947, and they only had one that late due to the after effects of WW2.

The Soviet Union was poor, but it wasn’t *that poor.* There might be a long line for bread, but there would be bread, or something else. As an empire they rarely had overall shortages, but distribution was very patchy. So party officials used their travels to buy, say, goods in Vladivostok that weren’t available in Moscow, and goods in Moscow you couldn’t buy in Leningrad. 

Don’t confuse them with North Korea (although even they managed somewhat alright until the USSR collapsed and their support vanished).