Reading Zimmerman's "Leaving Earth", there's the interesting story of Mir's occupation in 1991!
Cosmonauts Anatoli Artsebarski and Sergei Krikalev had to install the Sofora girder (the structure to the right).
They made several spacewalks to install Sofora and managed it (it was meant to position Mir using 85% less fuel than from engines on the Kvant 1 module).
On the forelast spacewalk, Anatoli had a leak in one of his gloves; the spacesuit had been aboard since 1988 and had been used for about 60 hours (10 times) , since! Anatoli activated the special emergency wrist cuffs and went on working (without suffocating). During a later spacewalk, he got permission to use the same spacesuit one more time. Both he and Sergei went all the way to the top of Sofora to install the last trusses. Then Anatoli had his spacesuit unable to absorb the moisture and he couldn't see anything (worse than Cernan in 1966) as his visor got condensed. he was blind at the top of the world's highest mast. He rubbed his chin against the visor base and managed to clear a tiny area and with Sergei's help, got slowly back to safety. Sergei went all the way to the top, put the hammer and sickle flag on highest part of Sofora.
That flag has a story: Anatoly wanted to have a (space-compatible) flag sent to space with them, but the bureaucracy made it impossible, so he had a friend buy an ordinary silk Soviet flag and they smuggled it inside the capsule at the last moment. That flag was erected just a few days before the same one at the Kremlin was removed and replaced by the Russian flag.

Anatoly, while aboard Mir, being a romantic, would leave his couch during sleeping hours and go to the largest window on Kvant 2 and look outside. He would stare motionless, while at nightside, looking at the stars and he could hear his heartbeat. Those heartbeats would shake his weightless body back and forth, back and forth....

Because Gorbachev wasn't a space nut like Krushev or Brejnev, Energya had to find means to earn some money. They first made some products "made in space" but sold them to another State-owned company so, it wasn't making profit at all this way. Another way was to save money by cancelling flights or delaying the delivery of other modules. That's why Sergei returned back in 1989, leaving Mir empty until september. Another way was to invite foreign and paying astronauts! It worked with the Japanese Akiyama but he was sick most of the time. It did not with Helen Sharman (the Russians ended up paying, not the Brits) but she definitely had the experience of her life (and I talked to her once, in 1998!). And in 1991, Sergei accepted to spend 5 more months aboard Mir, so that a paying astronaut and a Kazakh cosmonaut could be flown to Mir while he waited for the next seat available 5 months later.
Sergei Krikalev is one of the best spaceman, according to the US and Russia.
But anyway, it looks like inviting foreing astronauts with their scientific equipment works much better than producing things made in space.

Raoul