How A Russian’s Grocery Store Trip In
1989 Exposed The Lie Of Socialism
The Federalist,
by
Jon Miltimore
Original Article
Posted By: earlybird,
2/29/2020 3:24:50 PM
The fall of the Soviet Union is sometimes remembered as Nov. 9, 1989, the day the Berlin Wall symbolically collapsed.(Snip)The fall of the barrier that scarred Germany was indeed a watershed in the collapse of the Soviet Empire, yet one could argue the true death knell came two months before at a small grocery store in Clear Lake, Texas.(Snip)On Sept. 16, 1989, Boris Yeltsin was a newly elected member of the Soviet Parliament visiting the United States. Following a scheduled visit to Johnson Space Center, Yeltsin and a small entourage made an unscheduled stop at a Randalls grocery store in Clear Lake, a suburb of Houston.
Reply 1 - Posted by:
abuela10 2/29/2020 3:31:56 PM (No. 333068)
A co-worker finally bought his grandmother here from Cuba. She nearly passed out after he took her to Pathmark and she couldn't believe how much food she saw.
19 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
bogeegolf 2/29/2020 3:37:50 PM (No. 333073)
Oh wow! I just found out I have more respect for Yeltsin than the have for any democrat that I can think of.
29 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
HPmatt 2/29/2020 3:45:52 PM (No. 333076)
The Randall’s he visited, and in Clear Lake City, was best in class supermarket chain in Houston area for the time, not a mom&pop.
11 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
HPmatt 2/29/2020 3:49:19 PM (No. 333077)
I still see supermarkets that way now - out of season fruit from South America....tomatoes from Mexico, lettuce from CA, ham & cheese from Italy, 600 kinds of cereal and granola...all for competitive prices....what a great time to be alive....
19 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
Highlander 2/29/2020 3:53:47 PM (No. 333081)
Think about all these skulls-full-of-mush socialist idiot millennials complaining about this great country with their mouths full.
34 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
Lala 2/29/2020 3:57:48 PM (No. 333083)
A Czech friend came here for the first time a couple of years after the Soviet Union fell on a visiting professor stint. I took her to get groceries and she stood in the soup aisle and started to cry. She said she had to leave. She was so overwhelmed that she was paralyzed. That was eye opening. Every little potty mouthed spoiled Bernie supporter should be assigned To host someone from a Soviet wasteland for a week. It could change their lives if they’re not completely brainwashed.
39 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
jj1319 2/29/2020 4:42:45 PM (No. 333100)
I took a friend recently arrived from Cuba to a Super WalMart because she needed a bicycle lock. I couldn't get her out of the store she was so amazed. Someone gave her a promotional apple corer. You would have thought he gave her a watch, she was so impressed. She couldn't believe there was an entire aisle of potato chips. I'm not kidding: it took over an hour to get her out of the store.
18 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
rellimpank2 2/29/2020 4:44:51 PM (No. 333101)
--I was living in Leadville, Colorado in the early days of Nixon's 'detente"----two busloads of Russian mid-level government functionaries -with wives--came through ad stayed for two days. They wee on a trip that went form Washington, DC to Los Angeles, courtesy of the U.S. State Dep't--stopping in small town America on the way--
--they were still in awe of the local Safeway store (which wasn't even a large one---
--I am convinced that trips such as this sowed the seed of what lead to the fall of communism---
16 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
mean Gene 2/29/2020 5:09:31 PM (No. 333109)
But Bernie promises us that we will love the lack of choice!
Who needs more than two different pair of shoe options, he asks.
Why should there be so many different deodorants when a men's and a women's are enough, he opines.
Bernie sees Soviet era markets as a model.
Kobe beef/lobster/champaign for him but meat substitute/chicken and tap water for the rest of us.
16 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
zzzghy 2/29/2020 5:38:37 PM (No. 333119)
Absolutely agree with #4, 100%. Grocery shopping is kind of a hobby for me; I like going every day because I'm never certain what I want for dinner. Vons, Trader Joe's, Jensens, Ralph's...
My dad was like this. He loved shopping; I swear he would drive from Palm Springs to Indio to save five cents on a can of pork and beans.
12 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
Jesuslover54 2/29/2020 5:54:37 PM (No. 333124)
Yes, let's talk availability. Was thinking of moving from L.A. to the South and was worried they wouldn't have my "stuff."
Not exactly -- Trader Joe's, Costco with self-checkout, Panda Express, Chipotle, etc. However, I couldn't find an H Mart or a Peet's. But they'll come -- it's America.
2 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
Maggie2u 2/29/2020 6:20:30 PM (No. 333139)
Boy, the campaign ads write themselves. Show Fidel Sanders talking about how great bread lines are and show this video of a 'supermarket' in Russia.
Show Jonathan Gruber, the architect of free Obama care, telling an audience how Americans are so stupid they lied to get it passed and then have a voiceover saying...fool us once shame on you, fool us twice, shame on us.
9 people like this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
DVC 2/29/2020 6:24:45 PM (No. 333140)
Excellent piece. Having done business, traveled and worked in Russian and several other former soviet states, I can attest to this, although things were massively improving by the early 2000s when I started going over. I did talk to people who told stories about lines....for ANYTHING. They said that if you were walking down the street and saw a line, you got into it, immediately, without hesitation or question, without any idea of WHAT they might be waiting to purchase. It would be some real thing, and even if it was shoes, and you couldn't find your size, you could buy some and trade them for something else, better than the worthless money. I had access to several million US dollars worth of old soviet currency, worthless when I saw it, but it has been a millionaire's cache before he escaped to the USA. It looked a LOT like Monopoly money, same small size and bright colors, shoddy printing.
Read Thomas Sowell's "Basic Economics" for excellent comparisons of US and Soviet economic systems with actual facts obtained after the fall.
And as to Samuelson.....he seems to be another fool like Krugman. I studied macroeconomics in college and was extremely dismayed at the foolish nonsense that Samuelson was writing in the textbook. When I found a tiny sidebar on some guy named Milton Friedman, he made real sense. Keynes and Samuelson, "giants in economics" were totally full of beans.
5 people like this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
Lawsy0 2/29/2020 6:27:40 PM (No. 333144)
I am blown away that Boris Yeltsin could've been blown away by the plenty he found in America! I had no idea that he was that much of an intellectual. Bully for him. He has been resting in peace since 2007.
5 people like this.
Reply 15 - Posted by:
DVC 2/29/2020 6:29:50 PM (No. 333146)
We had a Ukrainian family come and visit us for three weeks and showed them a lot of the USA. This was in the 2014 time frame, so things has massively improved in Ukraine in the 25 years since this story was written, but still they were impressed with shopping for food. The wife taught my wife to make a very good borcht, basically a vegatable soup, heavy on the beets. Excellent stuff, and she taught us the way her mother taught her. My wife made a batch for some Russian scientists visiting a couple of years later, and they pronounced it as "very good borscht", which tickled my wife a lot.
6 people like this.
Reply 16 - Posted by:
DVC 2/29/2020 7:10:37 PM (No. 333187)
#11, never heard of either H Mart or Peets....somehow we managed to live all these years without the "superiority" of all things LA. LA and NYC are not the centers of the universe, and there are fine foods available pretty much everywhere in a medium sized city in this country. Just different names.
5 people like this.
Reply 17 - Posted by:
joew9 2/29/2020 7:26:39 PM (No. 333199)
If anyone ever doubts the claim that communism is slavery then just point to the Berlin wall. Nothing has ever been built like it in history. Lots of walls at borders have been built but they were to keep invaders out. The only other walls to keep people in have been the walls of prisons. East Berlin was a prison.
16 people like this.
Reply 18 - Posted by:
MickTurn 2/29/2020 8:33:09 PM (No. 333223)
My mother in law worked at the School of Aerospace Medicine at Brooks AFB, Tx. She was a translator, 7 languages...She sponsored people from many countries to get visa's and come the USA. I went with her to the airport to pick up a Russian family...on the way to their apartment (which my mother in law secured for them), we stopped at a grocery store to get food for the family. We saw the same reaction from them that Mr. Yeltsin had. They were amazed at what they saw. The father spoke fairly good english and asked me if this was a 'party store', I knew what he meant and told him America doesn't have 'party' stores or anything like that. He didn't believe me at first so we stopped at 3 more stores on the way to their apartment...they could not believe what they were seeing. Bottom line with this story is simple. If you want Socialism, go somewhere where it is practiced and live there for a minimum of 1 year...you will notice immediately it is a horrible type of system...why a year?...My way of punishing you for being so STUPID! Get over yourselves and become REAL Americans and stop it with the totally insane thinking that would ruin a great country!
23 people like this.
Reply 19 - Posted by:
hooter 2/29/2020 9:44:30 PM (No. 333238)
The lack of happiness on their faces tells you everything you need to know.
9 people like this.
Reply 20 - Posted by:
ARob101 2/29/2020 9:54:38 PM (No. 333244)
This should be mandatory reading for our young socialist following Mr. Sanders. Or any democrat for that matter.
9 people like this.
Reply 21 - Posted by:
Trigger2 3/1/2020 1:02:07 AM (No. 333317)
Our future should any of the current demonrat crop ever get to be president. Piglosi would push all the bills necessary to accomplish it by declaring to her commie brethren "you have to vote for it to find out what's in it."
5 people like this.
Thanks for posting. Great read. I think what changed US to an ungrateful nation was stopping the draft. Before, our young people traveled the world and saw poverty and lack that most young people today have never imagined. Americans who were alive during the great depression never got over being hungry and stocked up on food.
7 people like this.
Reply 23 - Posted by:
DVC 3/1/2020 2:49:45 AM (No. 333333)
Soviet citizens during the Cold War had things very hard, and yet, they believed that things in the USA were even harsher, poorer. The ones that came over were always shocked.
In 1976, Soviet fighter pilot Victor Belenko of Russia defected with his MiG-25, then very little known in the west, and very secret, landing in northern Japan. Belenko was driven by hatred for the Soviet system which had polluted much of his beloved boyhood home region, and a desire to harm the government as payback. He totally believed that the USA was a horrible place, bought all their propaganda, thought he would have a horrible life, felt it would be a sacrifice to hurt The Party.
After extensive debriefing, covering several years, by the CIA, he asked for "a big car" and to be able to 'go where I want'. He was released, and, still believing that ALL that he had seen so far was faked for his benefit by the CIA, he decided to "break through" to see the REAL USA. He would get in the car in the middle of the night and drive randomly in some general direction, stopping only for gas and food, until he was exhausted. Then he would find the nearest hospital and ask for a tour, or go to a supermarket and check it out, stop at a restaurant. SOMEHOW he could NOT get ahead of the CIA teams moving out just ahead of him and planting these special hospitals and supermarkets. It couldn't be actually like this. He was 100% certain that it was all fake, and vowed each time, to drive more randomly and farther, planning nothing, to "get ahead of them". After a few months of this, he was beginning to lose his mind, because he could not let go of the lifelong Soviet propaganda, and could not square those "facts" with what his eyes saw. He couldn't "break thru"..... "how were the CIA staying one step ahead of him?"
He eventually befriended a small town waitress and she was finally able to convince him that this WAS the normal, real USA, and the CIA had done nothing at all. In fact, the CIA had lost contact with him entirely. After an adjustment period, he finally settled down and understood that this was all real, and all normal. He eventually got US citizenship, married and had two kids here.
AFAIK, he is still alive, and periodically I read some writeup where he warns US politicians to never trust the Russians in anything.
His book MiG Pilot: The Final Escape of Lieutenant Belenko is a good read.
8 people like this.
Reply 24 - Posted by:
kono 3/1/2020 11:17:17 AM (No. 333599)
Thanks for giving permission to post this old article. I wish I could give the post, itself, a hundred thumbs up. Especially given the Democrats' love affair with Socialism. Recognizing that every human system of government has its trade-offs, the best among all very imperfect systems appears to be the representative Republic with lightly-regulated Capitalist economy that was planted here by our Founding Fathers in the late 1700s.
0 people like this.
Below, you will find ...
Most Recent Articles posted by "earlybird"
and
Most Active Articles (last 48 hours)
Comments:
This is an interesting and eye-opening view of how a prominent Russian politician experienced America’s greatness in a grocery store. And admitted to being impressed with the bounty he saw as opposed to the breadlines at home. Well worth a read, especially when Dem progressives and Bernie Castro are running for the presidency.
Article dated November 13, 2019, posted with Staff permission.