There is an assumption that the leaders of the Soviet Union were not true believers of Communism. That their "luxurious" lifestyle somehow proved that their belief was inequality or they lived the same bourgeois lifestyle of the Tsar's before. Stephen Kotkin dismisses this idea regarding Joseph Stalin and the others in his circle. Nikita Khrushchev also believed in the advancement of Communism and did not really waver in his belief. I started by saying this as a way to preface the answer to your question. In Western Media and history we have this belief that the Soviet leadership, the *apparatchiks* were simply evil, mustache twisting men who were pulling the wool over the eyes of the common folk. That Stalin, if given a chance, would have ruled as a capitalist if given a chance. To them every decision made it so Communism was advancing forward.
The idea of the Revolutionary State and that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was a "Vanguard of the Revolution" came from Vladimir Lenin. Marx had said that the workers would rise up, Lenin grappled with the idea of revolution but no "workers consciousness," or basically that the workers would not be educated in their rights or ideas about the Worker Revolution. Therefore, he saw the way forward would be a "Vanguard." They would usher in the Revolution on behalf of the Workers, thus starting the dominos of the Communist dogma. The issue in Russia and subsequently the Soviet Union was that Marx stated that Communism would be born out of a late-stage Capitalist State. This was important because Marx prophesied that only Capitalism would lead to end of scarcity, that it would lead to the end of "want," and essentially human needs would be met. The problem, as he saw it, was that scarcity would be eliminated but Inequality would be rampant. Thus a revolution would come, and the workers would inherit the World where scarcity no longer existed and they would abolish the inequality. The rub was, that in Russia, Capitalism had not reached the level that would be necessary to reach zero scarcity. Marx based his ideas on British and German economies of industrialization and Russia lagged in this regard considerably. The Communists in Russia before the Revolution thus had quite a conundrum. They could let Capitalism and "democracy" take hold in Russia, bidding their time to the inevitable Workers Revolution, while letting the workers be sold into proverbial chains to the bourgeoisie. The Bolshevik response was that the time to start the revolution was now, with the belief that their party and Russia could ignite the World Revolution.
The World Revolution did not happen, and thus a split happened which led to Trotsky and Stalin on opposing sides. Trotsky and his followers believed that Socialism or Communism within a single country could not exist and Marx called for a world revolution. Stalin started the "Socialism in One Country" which is where your question begins to take form, after the long road here. Stalin rejected Trotsky's idea of completely invading or instigating further Revolutions to continue the Communist Revolution. Instead based on ideas by Nikolai Bukharin, Stalin started the Socialism in One Country dogma, which meant building Communism within the Soviet Union. Thus started the long road to the idea that technology, industry, and development would lead the Soviet Union to abolish scarcity without waiting for Late-Stage Capitalism first, or the idea that Soviet Union would start the revolution at any cost in countries already at that point, such as the United States or Britain. Therefore, the Soviet Union after Stalin consolidated power began the road to Industrialization. The first was the reconciliation that the agricultural system in the Soviet Union was vastly behind and existed in this quasi-system of Capitalism and Communism. This started collectivization. This caused great suffering, millions died in the resulting famine. Ongoing was the first "Five-Year Plan" which called for massive industrialization. The building of a steel factory that was to be the largest in the world at Magnitogorsk. Canals were built, tractor factories were built. Tractors was a way to secure food for the people, and great lengths were gone to build them and send them to the fields.
The answer then to your question is; everything the Soviets did was with the belief that it led the Soviet Union closer to "Communism." Every factory constructed, every road built, every tractor sent from the factory, every chunk of Doctor's Sausage pressed. All these acts led the Soviet Union to Communism. There was another darker side to. The Soviets always felt threatened on all sides by capitalist powers, that they were encircled by enemies. The Soviet Union was compelled to, in a frantic desire, to both build Communism within, but also protect it from enemies both outside and within. This constant under siege mentality pervaded the Soviet Union, which meant grotesque atrocities and a need to build a military to defend communism.
This is why I prefaced this answer with the belief system. Too often we see a history in a lens we want to see it in, without realizing that it taints something else. A thought such as that the Soviet Union's leadership was in a cruel joke would lead someone to believe that they simply *lied* about building communism. That it was just a ruse to keep up appearances. Instead most of the leadership, especially senior leadership fundamentally were true believers and sought to build communism. This fact, probably is more terrifying than the first though.
/u/SavannaJeff is certainly well-researched, but I feel you have cherry-picked historians from schools dedicated to delegitimising the Soviet Union either ex post or from without. The ultimate Soviet goal of Communism expressed in the 1986 CPSU Programme had specific stages: 1) Optimisation of technical and technological facilities, 2) Extirpation of all social divisions of labour, 3) Gradual withering of the state, and 4) Social consciousness and universal civil participation. There were tangible steps made to try and achieve each of these, especially in the post-Stalin period, some more successful than others:
Soviet promotion of technological growth was specifically designed to produce abundance so that work would no longer be required. Josephson (1992) and Kojevnikov (2008) detail the post-Stalin creation of the Soviet cult of science, a deliberate state-led pseudo-deification of the scientific ideal. Nowhere else in the world since Einstein did scientists become such celebrities, and scientists like Sakharov and Prokhorov, as well as champions of the space race like Gagarin and Tereshkova all held political positions by virtue of their scientific achievements. Sakharov's Nobel prize made him essentially invulnerable even when he became an anti-government revolutionary.
Lots of examples here, but the best one is probably feminism. Misleadingly, the Soviets were the global champions of liberal feminism, or the movement to remove legal and social barriers preventing women from achieving the same status as men within the system; as opposed to socialist feminism, a primarily Third World movement aimed at freeing women from economic exploitation by the system. Soviet liberal feminism had mixed results, but pioneered the way for what we call feminism today. They were the first to mandate compulsory maternity leave, free childcare, gender quotas in workplaces and universities, among a wealth of other benefits designed to liberate women from some kind of 'domestic destiny'. Over time, focussed shifted to championing womens rights in internaional bodies like ECOSOC, CSW and CHR. Laville (2013) details the unprecedented political achievements of the Soviets, who by 1960 had more women in their legislature than every Western country combined, including in the Politburo through people like Furtseva and Stasova. Furtseva was one of the first to break the masculine double standard, though in a pretty weird way. She made a lover out of the ambassador to Yugoslavia, and publicly flaunted it, but was too powerful to really be censured, especially since her male colleagues were doing the same thing. Liberal feminism was heavily attacked by the West, who at the time were strong believers of domesticism, or the idea that women should be protected from the harsh realities of the working world and be allowed to pursue their domestic lives, so you'll find that most pre-1990 scholarship is highly critical of Soviet feminism in some way.
Oddly enough, they actually tried at different points even pre-glasnost. Agriculture had the biggest impacts, with De Pauw (1969) talking of how private plots made up 40% of production. These privileges were taken away and given back at various times depending on political circumstances, and obviously results were controversial, so I think focussing on the actual policy is rather irrelevant. More important was the rhetoric and attitude. In each decree to liberalise the agricultural sector (see Medley 1986), we find appeals to withering of the state and social rights, and almost no mention of efficiency. In fact, orthodox Soviet agronomy held that private plots were less efficient, but in a state of abundance, it was desirable to sacrifice efficiency for reducing coercion. Whether this is true is decidedly empirical.
Beginning in the mid-50s, Khrushchev in particular believed in the "all-peoples state", and began a deliberate transition of power from state and governmental institutions to collective public institutions. Hough (1976) details it better than I ever could, but the central idea was to draw millions of citizens into part-time public functions to formulate policy on the local level at every level. Committees and councils were formed in workplaces, universities, residence blocks, and even in the military, designed to facilitate a two-way consultative process. Whether this was productive or just annoying is also an empirical question, but attempts were certainly made.