Occasionally I’ll stumble across an older news article that is worth commenting on, even though it was posted a few months ago.
Earlier this year, the Houston Chronicle published a story about Boris Yeltsin visiting the United States in 1989. During his visit he visited NASA’s mission control center, but that wasn’t what excited him. It was an unscheduled stop to a local supermarket:
Yeltsin, then 58, “roamed the aisles of Randall’s nodding his head in amazement,” wrote Asin. He told his fellow Russians in his entourage that if their people, who often must wait in line for most goods, saw the conditions of U.S. supermarkets, “there would be a revolution.”Yeltsin asked customers about what they were buying and how much it cost… In the Chronicle photos, you can see him marveling at the produce section, the fresh fish market, and the checkout counter. He looked especially excited about frozen pudding pops.
The fact that stores like these were on nearly every street corner in America amazed him. They even offered free cheese samples. According to Asin, Yeltsin didn’t leave empty-handed, as he was given a small bag of goodies to enjoy on his trip.
About a year after the Russian leader left office, a Yeltsin biographer later wrote that on the plane ride to Yeltsin’s next destination, Miami, he was despondent. He couldn’t stop thinking about the plentiful food at the grocery store and what his countrymen had to subsist on in Russia.
In Yeltsin’s own autobiography, he wrote about the experience at Randall’s, which shattered his view of communism, according to pundits. Two years later, he left the Communist Party and began making reforms to turn the economic tide in Russia. You can blame those frozen Jell-O Pudding pops.
“When I saw those shelves crammed with hundreds, thousands of cans, cartons and goods of every possible sort, for the first time I felt quite frankly sick with despair for the Soviet people,” Yeltsin wrote. “That such a potentially super-rich country as ours has been brought to a state of such poverty! It is terrible to think of it.”
There are some really interesting photos on the Chronicle’s site too — you can just see the wonder and amazement on Yeltsin’s face in them.
Well, the next time you head out to Jewel, or Meijer, or Mariano’s, or whatever your supermarket of choice is… you too can take a moment to marvel and and appreciate all of the shopping choices we have each day.
J.R. says
I wonder when that wall will finally be torn down.
Or if we will have one here soon :(
curtscards says
We had some friends visit from South Africa about 10 years ago & they felt the same way. Even though conditions in S.A.(Cape Town) were not anything like in Russia they were still amazed in the variety of items. We took them to Jewel in Woodstock where there were about 100 different kinds of breakfast cereal compared to the dozen they had back home. The same for veggies, butter, cookies & everything we had 10 to 20 times more selection than they did. Listening to what they had to say & seeing the looks on their faces was priceless.
Cathy S says
Amen!
ereml27 says
I used to work with people from Belfast Northern Ireland and sometimes they would come into the states for a while. They always wanted to go to Jewel to look at the wide aisles and expansive food selection and to go to Woodfield Mall and see such a huge mall.
Before that I never realized what I took for granted.