Comment by torginus

That color shows up a lot in stairways apartment blocks and school corridors and bathrooms in ex-Soviet bloc countries.

My two guesses are that it was colored like that get the pilots feel like they were in a particular environment - a familar but not exactly private or comfortable one. It's a cultural thing like if you paint a bus yellow, Americans will think of a school bus, but most other people won't.

My other guess is that they only made certain kinds of dye, and its very well possible the same factory made it that made it for bathroom tiles. In capitalism, if you don't have orange paint, for example, some company will just start making it if there's a demand.

In communism, if nobody makes it, then it's not available, until and if some comittee decides that it should be made.