That's complete nonsense detached from reality. For the reference, I was a kid during the Soviet personal computing boom in the 80s, and it was the reason I got interested in electronics and computers at all. There was a huge push since the 60s, and computers were everywhere in the 80s, just not readily available to private owners due to the incapability of producing enough (you needed connections, not just money) and being expensive as hell.

"computers were everywhere in the 80s, just not readily available to private owners"

Agreed on that, and access to a computer system, e.g ES mainframe or SM family was not a problem for people who wanted it. I was in high school in mid-80s. I found a fortran book in the library, and it took me very little time to get access to the university-owned SM-1420, RSX-11, and a fortran compiler. That same lab ran free programming classes in the evening with faculty volunteers.