They were going to publish Lord of The Rings in the early 1960s but the Soviet censors saw too many “anti Soviet” hidden allegories, Evil totalitarian East vs. Free West, and the Scouring of the Shire being prominent examples. Even a LOTR “light” version (after all the parts that had troubled the censors were redacted) that was going to be published was canceled after the Reagan “evil empire” speech.
LOTR was eventually published in full in the Soviet Union in 1990 shortly before in ceased to exist.
My husband, then boyfriend, had told me about how he had just finished reading the Hobbit on board the ship on which he had been working as a merchant seaman, but that was in early 1974, not 1976.