>>I remember a story by one reporter who was visiting studios there, some time in mid sixties. He was shown, among others, a set of a bazaar in some Arabic place. He noticed that all the shop signs were in Cyrillic, and pointed out the inconsistency - and was told that it doesn't matter, the movie is not to be exported, nobody will notice.
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>I suppose it could have been Kazakstan (spelling) or one of those other satellite USSR middle-eastern states.
My serious doubts that Hollywood in mid sixties could go into such finesse and place the plot into a place that needed explanation. If it's Arabic, it's somewhere in the center of Arabic world. If it's in USSR, it's somewhere around Moscow or in Siberia.