I strongly recommend watching this Yeltsin speech to those born after 1985 who like to tell stories about the all-powerful and mighty USSR.
This is 1981. Perestroika isn't even on the horizon. Yeltsin is a party apparatchik. The USSR is at the height of its power. Oil prices are high. The Moscow Olympics were successfully held a year earlier. Two years earlier, Soviet troops were sent into Afghanistan.
Boris Nikolayevich, speaking with young people, answers questions about the bad cafeteria at SINKh (the city's most privileged higher-education institution at the time—the Sverdlovsk Institute of National Economy).
He's joking around and clowning. Like, he warned them he'd come inspect the place, and suddenly the cafeteria got better. At the words "there are cucumbers and tomatoes in the student cafeteria" the hall bursts out laughing—the joke lands perfectly, because even a child knows there couldn't possibly be tomatoes in a student cafeteria. HA HA HA—tomatoes.
"Three first courses, three main courses! Including beef stroganoff." The hall laughs.
And this is Sverdlovsk, a closed city (restricted-access Soviet city) that was well supplied.
The might of the USSR, sure.