Why the Soviet space shuttle was left to rot

Just before dawn on the morning of November 15, 1988, the Energiya rocket stood fueled and ready on the launch pad at Baikonur, the Soviet Union’s launch site. Mated to the booster was the Buran space shuttle orbiter, ready for its maiden flight. It looked to strongly reminiscent of NASA’s Space Transportation System, colloquially known as the space shuttle, but the two spacecraft weren’t identical.

NASA’s decision to pursue the space shuttle on the heels of the Apollo program came down, in short, to funding. On January 5, 1972, President Nixon announced that NASA would turn its attention to building a new spacecraft to transform the final frontier, something that could shuttle astronauts between the Earth and an orbital space station, though the station would come later. The shuttle would make spaceflight routine while keeping the cost low, thanks in large part to the Department of Defence who would be sharing the cost with the space agency in exchange for using it to launch military satellites. 
The announcement of NASA’s shuttle plans didn’t worry the Soviet Union who didn’t have any use for a shuttle; there was no need to compete with the Americans on this program. But that began to change in the mid-1970s.

Unlike America's national space agency NASA, the Soviet Union did not have a unified body managing its space activities. Instead, different design bureaus managed different projects. In 1974, engineer Valentin Glushko merged the TsKBEM design bureau with his own KB Energomash organization to form a new bureau called NPO Energiya. At the same time, he also took stock of the Soviet’s position in space. A year late, he was not alone in wondering why the Americans were building such a large space shuttle.

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https://www.popsci.com/why-soviet-space-shuttle-was-left-rot

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