You provided some yourself, earlier on when you wiki-linked.
No, I certainly did not. Here is the wiki-link again:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ten_largest_countries_by_GDP
The one table that shows the USSR on second place for some years is the one from the United Nations. In my earlier post, I have already pointed out why this does not show that the Soviet Union had a stronger economy than the biggest Western European countries or Japan: it is based on
nominal GDP, which, I suspect in this case means that the GDP is measured in rubles and then converted into US dollars
at the official exchange rate, which grossly overvalued the ruble.
But even if we do
not take this very important fact into account, and accept the official exchange rate as reflecting the real value of the ruble,
even then Japan has the second strongest economy from 1978 onwards (making the USSR the third strongest) and from 1986 West Germany also overtakes the USSR.
Here is another table, also based on United Nations figures, but this time not using nominal GDP, but using constant 2005 US dollar prices. The year is 1970, but many earlier or later years would also show that the USSR was far from having the second strongest economy during the Cold War:
Former USSR.................................................US$..........463,083,133,955
France..............................................................US$..........892,172,865,602
Germany.........................................................US$......1,312,894,209,499
Italy....................................................................US$.........788,910,117,779
Japan...............................................................US$.......1,654,537,529,469
United Kingdom............................................US$..........988,136,553,239
United States.................................................US$......4,204,123,054,571
You can find these data at this site (I have already provided this link in an earlier post):
http://unstats.un.org/unsd/snaama/selbasicFast.asp
You can make your own statistical table with this site. As a first step, select the country or countries whose figures you want to display, by clicking on the country in the list and then on the "add" button. As a second step, you choose the currency, and finally the year or years you want to display, and then you push the "Submit" button.