OK, I am not a historian but a quality engineer. Still, I may be able to add a few points...

I would be careful to call soviet engineering or design subpar. However, many products were indeed much worse than what was built in the west at the same time.

You made an interesting point with mentioning the AK47. This is a very simple product, simple enough to be designed by a single, gifted person who understood the demands of the users of the end product, the production limitations etc. There was no big organisation behind the design, and the design was adapted specifically to very primitive manufacturing. There are other examples of pretty simple, rugged technology that is still going strong.

Actually, there are quite a few engineers throughout the history of engineering whose name is tied to a specific invention or product, an invention or product they designed on their own. Take names like James Watt, André Citroën, Max Friz, they all came up with a hugely successful product, and designed it pretty much on their own. They may all have stood on the often-quoted "shoulders of giants", but they did not work in a big organisational structure.

These "lone geniuses" have always existed and can be found in the USSR, too.

The big difference lies in two other points:

First, the actual production. Designing the most brilliant thing on paper and then having it built in a factory that is not able to produce consistent product quality, or that has only sub-par resources or materials will still result in a bad product. This is something that has plagued many USSR products, but if you look back at the auto industry in the US (and the UK, too, for that matter), they had the same issues. Both countries produced notoriously shit quality (for lack of a nicer word, really) cars until they learned how to do better (US) or went pretty much collectively bust (UK). This difference is the second point:

Secondly, organisational strength. With the end of WWII most products had become so complex that the "lone engineer" or "lone inventor" could not handle things on his own anymore. Suddenly what you needed were bigger design teams. A load of specialists coming together, each doing their thing and combining their knowledge. There is a reason why you don't know any names of famous engineers anymore - there are no more heroes out there. This meant that having a brilliant mind was no longer enough. You needed people (and structures) to coordinate the whole thing. You needed processes. You needed organisational strength instead of a singular brilliant mind.

And the same thing is true for the manufacturing side. The days of the artisan are over. There are no more master craftsmen who can take their time assembling fairly simple products, disassembling, repairing and reassembling as they go. Mass production has other needs. Everything has to work right from the get-go. Any fault in the process will stop the assembly line.

This becomes most apparent in things like aerospace (like you example with the cosmonat's faulty parachutes). In aerospace, there is no second try. A tiny mistake means catastrophic losses. No engine stop and come to a halt on the hard shoulder. Everything has to work 100% in 100% of the cases. No exeptions.

This is incredibly difficult to achieve with super complex machinery like spacecraft. Literally any part out of millions can fail, each in a multitude of ways in a mulititude of conditions with a multitude of interdependencies. To make sure that your rocket flies you need to understand what could possibly go wrong.

And this is where the west developed a really big advantage. Literally looking at a part and asking "What could possibly go wrong?". And then looking at the next part and asking the same thing. Again and again and again. This method, called FMEA (Failure Mode and Effect Analysis) may have been the main contributor to the American success in the space race. The US just got it right more times than the Russians.

From the space industry these processes and organisational tools carried over into first airplanes and military equipment, then automotive and then into other industries, too. This is why the western industries have been able to build more and more complex products with better and better quality.

But to do this, they needed to create an atmosphere where instead of finding someone to blame you find out what went wrong and avoid that mistake in the future. They needed a very strong organisation that was able to manage these hugely complex projects. There was no more need for individual geniuses working on their own, there was a need for a team, and a huge team, to do genius things. Like they say in football (soccer for the guys who actually flew to the moon): You don't need the eleven best, you need the best eleven!

And that is why soviet products were subpar. Because they were unable to sustain organisations that were big enough to handle the complexities of the tasks at hand.

I think your premise might be somewhat flawed;

Spacecraft parachutes are pretty close to the outside edge of what's possible when it comes to 1960s technology. Early US spacecraft had a number of parachute failures in the early years, though they were only fatal to monkeys. It's also worth noting that the equivalent US hardware killed three astronauts during ground tests for reasons that were (in retrospect) perhaps even stupider than anything that contributed to Komarov's death.

Soyuz also overcame its teething troubles to become the longest serving and most flown manned spacecraft in history. It's had two fatal accidents during its service life, which puts it on par with the only other vehicle that's flown nearly the same number of missions. If it's an example of bad engineering it's a remarkably successful one.