In the 1980s, the world’s largest producer of shoes was the Communist Soviet Union. In his 1994 book, Dismantling Utopia, Scott Shane reported that the U.S.S.R. “was turning out 800 million pairs of ...

And yet, despite this colossal output of Soviet-socialist footwear, queues formed around the block at the mere rumor that a shop might have foreign shoes for sale: “The comfort, the fit, the design, ...