I realize that this question is somewhat subjective and gesturing in the "what's if" direction, so if it is not appropriate for this sub, I understand.
However, something I have always wondered is the extent to which the various Soviet modernization policies (collectivization, the five year plans, etc.), while calamitous to many millions of people who were directly effected, were responsible for the eventual geopolitical strength of the state. Is there a consensus among historians as to whether the USSR's rise to being a superpower was mostly a consequence of the natural advantages that Russia enjoyed, such as a large population, huge strategic depth, victory in WWII, abundant natural resources, etc., or whether this was importantly facilitated by the industrialization and modernization policies that the Soviets put in place?
Another way to look at this question is whether the success of the USSR could have been replicated in other countries with less strategically amenable geographies and demographics (such as, for example, struggling African countries today).
This question really needs some periodization. The early mass industrialization efforts (starting with the the First Five Year Plan, let's say) were hugely successful when it came to industrializing the Soviet economy. The costs of this, you seem already familiar with, so I won't dwell on them here. I think it's fair to say that this period of rapid industrialization under Stalin - while catastrophic - also ended up being really important to Soviet Union. Could it have been done in a way that wasn't so brutal - I'd imagine so - but now we're getting into speculation and what if. The centrally run economy was actually pretty decent at doing large scale industrial projects, mobilizing for war (which mattered a ton in World War 2) and that sort of thing. It was terrible at managing things like consumer goods, creating them in sufficient numbers and distributing them to where they needed to go
That all being said, it's also very clear that later on the abundance of oil played a HUGE role in keeping the Soviet economy humming along. Stephen Kotkin talks a lot about this in the opening to his retrospective on the disintegration of the Soviet Union Armageddon Averted. He (and others) argue that it oil really saved the Soviet economy in the 1970s and when global oil prices dropped, the Soviet economy suffered greatly, including during the 1980s when things ultimately fell apart. So, I think you can make an argument that the Soviet economy really did depend a lot on the natural resources on which it stood. This was particularly important to the Soviet economy in the last 20 or so years of its existence. However, the economy to extract and distribute those resources had to be built essentially from scratch by the Soviet state - and it did that.
I hope that's at least somewhat satisfactory as an answer.