In the previous episode Phillip ruefully asks Elizabeth why the USSR, which has farmland as big as the USA, can't grow enough food to feed their people. In this one, Alexei Morozov tells him that because of the overwhelming bureaucracy in the USSR, harvested grain often sits for long periods and rots before it can be processed, which explains why they had such enormous shortages. The persistent food shortages will be a recurrent issue for the Soviet characters for the rest of the series. It was problems like this that would eventually lead to the downfall of the USSR.
Even though in this and the previous episode Mischa Semenov is in Ljubljana, Slovenia (formerly part of Yugoslavia), no Slovenian language is spoken or heard. The language spoken by "locals" is Serbo-Croatian.