Long accepted historical facts are misinformation. Wikipedia is imperialist propaganda. Stalin was a good guy. Don’t you dare mention that he had defectors who tried to warn him about Hitler’s invasion executed for their trouble. That’s an inconvenient historical fact, so it’s fake news.
What do you actually need to get to “the space age” in the middle of the 20th century? All you really need is enough money to develop some very small, very niche industries. The question is really anyone would want to waste the money on it, and the answer for the USSR was that it was engaged in an arms race with the US.