When it comes to innovation and standard of living in the USSR, what are you comparing it with?
Africa or Germany? A black American in the South, a poor farmer in Kentucky or a company director in New York?

Most of the major Western powers got rich through imperialism, colonialism or slavery. Through exploiting peasants, workers and even child labourers. Then today, neo-colonialism in the form of sweatshops, forced bargain prices on third world produce etc. Or even starting a war or an invasion to get cheap access to the assets you need.

The USSR did not do any of that, really, at least not on a big scale, or outside its own borders.
So with less exploitation they achieved less wealth. Plus, the USSR "wasted" a lot of money that could have been spent on consumer comfort on supporting other socialist countries, on the arms race etc.

But it doesn't seem like an appalling standard of living, just not comparable to the richest Western countries at the time.

I visited both the USSR and Spain closely following each other in the mid 1980s when I was a kid. I remember thinking that the Soviets lived better than the most people in Spain. Just as a comparison, my own reflection, I have no stats to support that. Spain at the time had just come out of being a right wing dictatorship under Franco.

The USSR had many amazing achievements and inventions, just not in the area of consumer products.