I wouldn't give any credence to the notion that any of the Soviet Union's problems can really be resolved by just bringing in "new talent". Fundamentally, administrative and political talent, in particular ambitious such, tend to modify their views so that they may reach power. Or, at the very least, haggle, be open for intellectual compromise with themselves.
And such men could advance to positions of power in the USSR. The notion that there was this vast pool of talent just sitting there going, "I would join the Communist Party and work for them if they just allowed for a little more deviation from the official party line, but until then, I'm going to go for a different career" is one that I say is not rooted in reality. If for no other reason, then because from the fifties onward, there really weren't those kinds of strictly ideological tests for positions of authority that you saw in, for instance, Maoist China, the kind characterized by slogans like "Better red than expert!".
To illustrate what I mean, consider Alexander Lukashenko, Nursultan Nazarbayev, Islam Karimov, and Boris Yeltsin. These were people who were longtime members of the Communist Party, who had careers in the Communist Party, who rose to become the leaders of their constituent republics in the USSR when the Soviet Union was still ongoing. And who, once the Soviet Union fell, continued to be prominent politicians if not outright heads of government of their respective countries, leading parties having denounced Communism. I think that it's fair to say that none of them, not even Lukashenko, were doctrinaire, true-believing Marxists. They were career politicians, men wanting power. And such men could and did reach prominence in the old system.
The problem here is the system itself when it comes to running the show, and reforming itself when it needs to, not that it is ideologically distasteful to talented potential.