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@moth
By sticking their equivalent of the space shuttle main engines on the bottom of the main fuel tank instead of on the Buran, the Soviets gained a system that could launch 100 tonne battle satellites to LEO, vs the shuttle's 20 tonne payload. Obviously that cost a bit on the re-usability front, but the shuttle's engines were designed to run so close to their limits that they're better described as rebuildable than reusable.
While the Americans had a thing for making rocket engine combustion chambers out of intricately braised-together bent tubes and trying to explore the whole design space of exotic rocket propellants, the Soviets went for much simpler steel pressure-vessels with channelled copper liners and just struck to a few propellant systems, building bigger when they needed more performance. But on the other hand while the Americans stuck to fuel-rich pre-burners, the Soviets mastered the metallurgy need to run turbo pumps with lean pre-burners and hence unlocked staged combustion cycle engines that can burn denser hydrocarbons without coking.
Perhaps the reason the Buran never got as much work as the Space Shuttle was that shuttles were never that great an idea, and the Russians had the Soyuz rockets which were. Only with SpaceX has America acquired an equivalent. Other parts of the Soviet 'shuttle' system live on: the strap-on boosters used RD-170 engines, which developed into the RD-180s that America still buys for it's Atlas launchers.