Our military leadership plus industrialists have found it convenient to use the Russians (and now the Chinese) as 'boogeymen' so as to get more budget / sell newer and better weapons system. The USSR played along, of course (e.g. Khruschev's comment on missiles: "We're making them like sausages!"). Yes, they had the H-bomb, and yes, they had ICBMs, so if it came to a global exchange of nuclear weapons, we were all screwed, but the relative military competence of the USSR - and now the RF - has been obscured for decades.