Sparta was basically an aristocratic oligarchy/monarchy.

USSR was the same except it made trash aristocracy. There was one difference, the CC CPSU really was a college, Brezhnev couldn't make decisions all alone, for example. But, well, Sparta was sort of a college on top too, if I remember correctly.

See those movies and stories of USSR's public culture of the 30s-50s - that pompous imperial pretense, those main heroes with steel scornful faces looking down at subservient or immoral or not to be trusted helpers. Not everything, but there is a feel.

Like "Fourth height" - unironically a movie of a girl who flew airplanes in her teens, in USSR, as sport, then became an actress, and then a medic on a frontline and killed there. That's even less normal social level in the USSR than, say, in England. But such things were given as a something normal, there are those people rightfully better in our just socialist society.

Again, that's Stalin's time.

I don’t think you can really compare the education systems either - Spartans had little internet in creating poets, artists or engineers.

You do realize all the official parts of Soviet art were about ideology and what didn't impede it? And heavy industries were built around military goals. Most of Soviet industries existed in peacetime just so it would be easier to convert them in case of war, and what they were producing in peacetime was secondary.

Really, the goal of the Spartans was to be lazy aristocratic fucks who played soldier while the helots did the work. They were pretty shit at it too. But all about warriors and honor, “return with your shield or on it” at least in theory. Terrorize the helots every once in a while to keep them in line and make your dick feel big.

They were actually subsidized (or one can say paid as mercenaries) by other cities\rulers often. They were apparently not too shit at war for that, but certainly not qualitatively better than everyone else.

The goal of the Soviet project was rapid industrial development to set up the conditions necessary for the abolishment of the state/“true communism.”

Nah, it even officially was world revolution first, military for that, industries for that, communism later. Stalin retconned it into socialism in one country, but industries still for war, because it fit him better. After him Soviet ideology was retconned into socialist friendship of peoples, unification of humanity and industries to achieve that and communism.

in part because Jews and gays are icky, and steered that project straight into a wall.

Usually hateful parts are done "because we can" and are not the main reason.

I guess one commonality is the the USSR was one of the first states to legalize same sex intercourse, and the Spartans were all about mansex.

For a couple of years, until that was made illegal and a mental illness, together with banning abortions and other progressive socialist future-aimed policies.