I am somewhat surprised by the fact that so many people express doubt about the idea that the USSR could be embarrassed by "too many cars in a Western movie abo

I am somewhat surprised by the fact that so many people express doubt about the idea that the USSR could be embarrassed by "too many cars in a Western movie about poverty". Absolutely. From the point of view of someone who grew up behind the Iron Curtain, Communism's obvious inability to supply its populations with consumer goods was a major sore spot. It went against the Marxist-Leninist theory which postulated that Communism is more efficient in producing useful goods for people, not less. And cars especially were a highly coveted status symbol. In order to buy one, you had to go to a waiting list and wait for several years, plus spend a relatively extreme amount of money, even a shitty model of Trabant or Škoda would set you back about 50 average monthly wages. There were massive shortages of spare parts too and people would demont their wipers off before leaving their car on the street overnight, because otherwise someone would steal them. Now I am describing the reality of my growing up in the 1980s Central Europe, not in Stalin's USSR, which was remarkably worse in all aspects; at least we didn't lack shoes. Reactions of the regimes varied, of course. In Czechoslovakia, there was no denying that the Westerners have more stuff at their disposal, because the country wasn't tightly closed off and there was a lot of trade especially with Austria and Western Germany, which necessitated some mutual movement of people over the border. So the regime's reaction was, basically, sour indignity. But Stalin's USSR was so tightly isolated that normal people never met Westerners; there, the propaganda was able to keep the illusion of Communism's material superiority much more credible. To a random Soviet person, the idea that a person could have a car and still be poor didn't compute. I would compare it to the idea that a person could have a yacht and be poor; such combinations just don't happen in your world if a (car, yacht) are obviously luxuries. There is a reason why Russian soldiers of 2023, who mostly come from underdeveloped parts of Russia, still plunder WCs. The more to the East you get, the more severe the material deprivation.