This is becoming tedious. Generalized postulations and assertions are hurled leaving it to the responder to refute in detail. The level of personnel and facilities the Soviets devoted to directed energy was massive compared to the US. The scope of their efforts and the degree to which they brought them forward (Polyus) was far beyond comparable US efforts. The analog is the chemical weapons program which was mentioned in the video. This whole argument is of a kind with the claim of a moon race hoax set up by the US government to justify massive expenditures for the military-industrial-complex ™. Your “post war revelations” must studiously avoid examining all the Youtube videos of Soviet HEL projects (which is just a partial record and ignores all the particle beam work going on)
When the Soviets succeeded in mastering a weapon system, they went into production in quantity. When they stumbled, they paused or shifted resources elsewhere. In the end, the sheer scale of these efforts (along with the fundamental inefficiency of socialism) collapsed the state. If anything, US interpretation of Soviet progress underestimated how inefficient Soviet bureaucracy could hobble their efforts. In terms of manpower and physical assets, the Soviet N1 booster was a match for the Saturn V. A Soviet manned lunar attempt was considered to be a real possibility until N1 launch failures doomed the program.