I think technical education in the soviet union was a lot stronger than it was in the free world, at least in the 20th century. When I was 16, I was enrolled in the top high-school maths units in the early 1980s in Australia. Maths was about 1/3 of the academic contact hours and the curriculum was pretty standard across all the Australian states.
A family from the Ukraine somehow managed to immigrate to Australia and their 16 year old girl was enrolled on our maths classes. She was years ahead of the rest of the class.
She said she was a very mediocre maths student at home in the Ukraine, said quite a few times that in her opinion we had been taught basically nothing in the Australian system. I don't know how much maths the average soviet citizen learned, but I got the strong impression that soviet students who were actually interested in the subject got a much better mathematical education than they would have in Australia/US/UK.
My 3rd grade Ukrainian math education carried me through 10th grade ("Accelerated" classes in a 36/36 school district). An anecdote, but basically I fell behind my Ukrainian peers very early. I remember coming back and a friend who was younger than me was already doing calculus when we weren't.
A family from the Ukraine somehow managed to immigrate to Australia and their 16 year old girl was enrolled on our maths classes. She was years ahead of the rest of the class.
She said she was a very mediocre maths student at home in the Ukraine, said quite a few times that in her opinion we had been taught basically nothing in the Australian system. I don't know how much maths the average soviet citizen learned, but I got the strong impression that soviet students who were actually interested in the subject got a much better mathematical education than they would have in Australia/US/UK.