Kalinin Avenue, Moscow, 1979

By 1979 there was no serious Soviet economist to really believe in the viability of their economic system. They were visiting fellow economists, all over the world, asking for any other non capitalist alternative that works, while at the same time rejecting the Deng Xiaoping's reforms in China. They were struggling to keep up with what the West had to offer. The thundering Japanese miracle was completely demoralizing for them, so they tried, with photos like this, to show that they were at the forefront of human development. A really nice concise history of USSR is the book "The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Economy" by Philip Hanson, Routledge. Photo by Vladimir Fedorenko. #USSR #photography #Moscow