In my History of the Soviet Union and Government of Russia courses, I somewhat remember the professors making a statement such as, "During the 1960's the Soviets were at their peak and were only marginally behind the United States in regard to both SoL and Military power".
How true is this statement? Ever since those statements I regarded the USSR as almost overtaking the Americans during the first half of the 60's. Is there another portion of Soviet history where they were at their "strongest"? Were the Americans really much farther ahead of the Soviets than my professors and I think? (Tbh course was years ago I can't remember the exact statement) I can't seem to find any actually good answers online at the moment. Any input would help, thanks!
I talk a little bit about Soviet vs US standards of living and comparative military strength in a thread of answers here.
While standard of living is kind of a vague term and doesn't always match economic development, in short no - the USSR was not on track to overtake the US. There was always a gap, and during the 1960s when the USSR still had good economic growth, it was able to keep from falling behind, but as its economic growth slowed, this gap grew. Even in terms of life expectancy, the USSR was behind the US, and its average life expectancy stalled around 68 and even dipped a little while the US life expectancy continued to increase to 75 by 1989. The USSR was a large developing country, and was more comparable to, say, Argentina or Mexico, than to the US or UK. It also had a chronic consumer goods shortage and housing shortage, in part because it devoted a much larger percentage of its smaller economy to the military than did the US. Despite economists like Paul Samuelson predicting during the Cold War that the USSR would eventually overtake the US, it was always supposed to be 20 years in the future - until there wasn't a Soviet Union any more, and the predictions were quietly dropped.
In military terms, the USSR was much closer to the US than in economic terms, but this was still famously exaggerated by the "Missile Gap" debate of 1960, and the debate of a Soviet "Window of Opportunity" in the late 1970s. I get into some of that in the linked thread, but you also might want to check out this more detailed answer on that subject by u/wotan_weevil.