Watch the 1990s era video linked in the original article (and mentioned elsewhere in the commentary here). Those 90s Muscovites were living in the most urban part of the Soviet Union. Just imagine trying to get a grade 8 bolt in the countryside.
(I do like Tags in Porter Square, but their selection is lacking. Great people though.)
In the outskirts of San Francisco (where I moved from), it's easy to find massive hardware and fixture stores that aren't Home Depot. The East Bay is full of them too. In LA and Sacramento there are literally giant industrial parks full of retail stores dedicated to specific home improvement niches. I once spent nearly a whole day walking door-to-door looking at flooring.
Of course, it might take you an hour to get across town if you time traffic badly...
Meanwhile I live in a "blighted shithole" in MA and anything I could possibly want to buy is likely within a 20min drive. Like, I needed a CV shaft for a (not obscure but not common) 25yo car last week and four(!) different stores had it in stock, two stores had multiple different options. If I lived in the Boston area I would have been dragging my ass to the massive Autozone in Framingham
(They all spend half their lives at thay same Home Depot, too.)
There are a lot of smaller stores, don't get me wrong. But figuring out which has inventory, which can cut something so it fits in my car, etc. - functionally, Home Depot just wins. Which is a bummer, 'cause their service can be really bad. I try to know exactly what I need before I even go in, and try to minimize the need for stuff like cut-to-size services even though my hatchback isn't huge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_1981_hunger_demonstrati...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980s_austerity_policy_in_Roma...