Those are extremely relevant, especially the source for those invocations.
E.g. I could believe the USSR achieved greater income equality, but I'm skeptical it would have produced those innovations.
Without those aspects (but keeping equality more or less same, e.g. like Swedish style democratic socialism) it could be a very different story.
It's not like inequality produced them. If anything, today with rampant inequality we have far fewer innovations (and the US has far worse infrastructure, roads, etc) than in the golden post-war era up to the 90s.
You might also want to revisit your assumption that the US in 1917 wasn't an agrarian economy, given that the majority of Americans worked on farms between the World Wars.
Also, Baku (joined the USSR into 1920) produced over half the world's oil at that time.
About 30% at the start of that period through 15% at the end.[1]
[1] https://www.ncci.com/Articles/Pages/II_Insights_QEB_Impact-A... first chart. And that's workforce, not "people"
[0] “In the end, all such authoritarian measures were dismissed by the Commission, which instead went with Sundbärg's goal of bringing the best sides of America to Sweden (unsurprisingly, as Sundbärg himself wrote the conclusions). First on his list of urgent reforms were universal male suffrage, better housing, general economic development, and a broader popular education which could counteract ‘class and caste differences.’” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Emigration_Commissio...
[1] “Always a dedicated traveler, Mr. Palme after graduation hitch-hiked around the United States for four months, visiting 34 states on a $300 shoestring budget that took him into pockets of poverty in a land of plenty. It was a shocking experience for the young aristocrat. He recalled having seen 'how poor some people were in the world's richest land.' The advanture marked a turning point in his life, and the comment was virtually a theme for what was to become the socialist ideology of his political life.” https://www.nytimes.com/1986/03/01/obituaries/olof-palme-ari...
