My investigative curiosity would challenge Tenner's example and as a result, Goldman's observation.

For example, what was the function of the offices that the economist was visiting? There would have been offices where you would expect to see nothing but wide carriage models.

Alternatively, perhaps the phenomenon could be explained by cultural differences or opposing philosophies. Western societies are accustomed to ordering task-specific equipment, which results in many different models capable of performing slightly different jobs. The Soviets demonstrated in their history to favour simplicity and scale in their manufacturing, and it wouldn't be a surprise to me if they used a one-machine-does-all approach to typewriters. 

Along those lines, since I live in an area that has a very large number of Russian and Ukrainian immigrants I've often wondered why I've yet to come across one example of a Russian-made typewriter. This could say something about what was available to them (long carriage machines don't pack well), but more likely it has something to do with time period that most emigrated. 

That pen vs. pencil debate never gets old. There are a number of other good comparisons to point out the differences between Russian and Western design philosophy, ones that prove to the chagrin of engineers that sometimes simplicity and crudeness are better solutions to a problem than those that are complex and refined. 
 
I openly admit that I don't know a thing about Russian-made typewriters. Every machine I've come across that was equipped with a Cyrillic typeface was a domestically manufactured model, presumably either sold locally or intended for export. However, since a good portion of the typewriter century included the post-war years, one has to include models that were manufactured by Warsaw Pact countries that would have made their way into the Russian inventory. The history of those machines is something I'm far more familiar with.

I spent a few minutes trying to find typewriters being sold in Russia, and not surprisingly what I found were a lot of East German models - even some with wide carriages (below).  And of course a Mockba. I'll have to invest more time to see if I can find unfamiliar models (to me).

Optima M12 in Russia


Seidel & Naumann Ideal standard in Russia


Mockba

I can't say for sure, but the picture of the Mockba looks rather like the pre-war German Continental Standard.  There was a rumour that the Russians took the tooling from the Continental factory after the war, but were unable to produce the machines in Russia because they didn't realise that Continental had a lot of parts made by local sub-contractors.  Well maybe they overcame the problems associated with that and started making the machines in their entirety !