in the early 80s moscow had barges of potatoes sitting waiting to used, but the russians could not make a cheap paper box for instant potatoes. that was when the cia and everyone else should have known that like the rotting potatoes the USSR ahd no chance of beating the west
Right after the Soviet Union fell our state ag college brought Russian farmers here to learn modern farming. One of the guys told me stories that would have been hilarious if they hadn’t been so sad.
One that sticks with me is that the government didn’t allow crops to be put into barns because they were worried about hoarding. So the crops were harvested and left along the roadside for trucks to pick up. But since roads were bad and trucks were few (and busy at harvest time) the crops largely rotted where they were placed.
I would think that after a few years of watching a year’s work turn to compost even the most die hard communist would start to lose faith.