You're comparing a (probably rural?) 'general store' in the 80's with current megastores and for some reason link that to the austerity experienced under communism with centrally planned economies. That's a silly comparison since those small rural general stores still exist - there's one a few km from where I live in Sweden which sells everything from groceries to clothes to tools, doubles as a feed store and also happens to sell a few dozen types of lubricants for agricultural equipment, all in a collection of small wooden buildings of the type the Swedish countryside is dotted with - and will hopefully continue doing so in the future. Compare the average supermarket in the USA in the 80's with the non-party-member equivalents in the eastern bloc countries in the same time for a better comparison. I never made it to Russia in that time but I did visit Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia - both countries no longer exist - as well as the USA in that time and the difference was as clear as daylight. The USA was and still is the land of plenty, even compared to the Netherlands where I'm from and then lived but especially compared to those eastern bloc countries. This was not a matter of 'different times' but 'different political and economical systems'.