With all due respect to the lovely young women in this photo my attention was drawn to the line of people stretching for several blocks behind them. During Soviet times consumer goods were always scarce especially Western imports. As these goods were made available people often chose to take time off from work in the hopes of obtaining them. The queue in this photo represents such a situation. You don’t really think that they were lining up for concert tickets, do you? Anyway, one item often mentioned at the time was Italian ladies shoes. Bear in mind that even if you managed to get to the front of the line the shoes given to you might be the wrong size. The people knew this but because they had value the shoes could be bartered for something else. So was the state of the economy for decades until the Soviet Union finally collapsed. Their command economy was driven to build weapons not consumer goods.

“Ukraine” The Queue” c.1950