They got a leg up and still the Russians with Sputnik got into space first, on top of splitting Korea and winning in Vietnam and having the nuclear bomb fall into their lap and to top it off they appear to have the Manchurian candidate in the White House.

Take a deep breath.

The Russians conscripted more German rocket scientists than the Americans got through Operation Paperclip, both programs were bootstrapped with German expertise. Americans got ~1,600, Russians more like 6,000.

With fairness to the Soviets, the USSR's reputation for rocket artillery was nearly as impressive as Germany's in WWII. The Allies had less experience scaling and deploying the technology, so they had more to gain by taking in the Peenemünde researchers.