No, they were done with Nixie tubes by the end of the 70’s… well, most of them.

Jr. Highschool history teacher visited, said they employ old ladies in the Moscow subway to watch the escalators just because everyone needed a job.

That was one of the main problems with communism and socialism. Not enough incentive for education, so just make up jobs, no matter how stupid they are. We called those jobs “doorknob operators” in ex Yugoslavia. It was a shitty deal, but there was no incentive for a large portion of the population to actually learn something useful because even if you don’t have anything other than a 4th grade education, you still had to be part of the workforce, and instead of forcing people to actually get a degree (mind you the state was the only employer at that time, even though, at least in ex Yugoslavia, there was an option for venture capital and self-employment in the 80’s, but no one actually did it… or very few, and on a very small scale), they just went “the hell with it 🤦… just… do something”… which could have panned out in the long term, but no one could know.