Engineers are needed in all modern societies, capitalist or socialist.

Engineering education was really good. I read some Physics and some Math textbooks, and they are amazing. Same goes with Chemistry.

On the other hand, History education was all about how kings and grand dukes were bad, and how Lenin was great. Same goes with Arts, Literature and Philosophy (I once stumbled upon a book that says how class warfare was among the Greek elite, Plato was bad idealist and Democrites and Aristotle were good because they comply with the Marxist Materialism. And that was in a Math history schoolbook!) Plus a lot of discrimination, children of Party members were given good grades, even if one looks for Japan in the Africa (a real case). Ethnical discrimination (Russian chauvinism) also existed, the idea that "everything was made by Russians" and silencing the other USSR and foreign nations' achievements. We see a war in Ukraine as a continuation of this idea.

But, going back, yes, people knew knew how electricity, space travel, nuclear power and particle accelerators worked.

EDIT: mismatched closing delimiter