Posted on 02/24/2016 7:57:30 PM PST by Beave Meister
I had never heard about this story before, but a clever and competent reader shared it on our Facebook page, and I thought some of y’all might enjoy it too.
Back in 1989, card-carrying Communist and Politburo member in the Soviet Union Boris Yeltsin visited Johnson Space Center, and then took a tour of a grocery store in Clear Lake, Texas. According to a Houston Chronicle reporter, Yelstin was far more affected by the grocery store visit than he was the space center.
He apparently was stunned by the aisles and aisles of supermarket products, and told the other Russians in his entourage that if Russians saw what American grocery stores looked like, when in their homeland they had to wait in line for most everything, “there would be a revolution.â€
(Excerpt) Read more at chicksontheright.com ...
Bkmrk.
Even Americans have forgotten the massive wealth of capitalism, since the government has turned so hard towards socialist policies.
yup, same as when the Grapes of Wrath came out the commies tried to use it as propaganda against the US till they found out the the real message it put out was that even the poor in the US had cars and trucks and freedom of movement,,, it quickly and quietly went away
If I recall there was a similar story about Kruschev. This is not surprising.
I went to an open air market in Siberia in the 1980s. A very large, multiple kiosks set up. 85% of the area had nothing but old detritus in empty bins.
There were two products for sale. Battered, wilted, soft cabbages, or some paper wrapped blocks of what was supposed to be shortening or cooking lard. These blocks were very suspicious looking. Dirty, translucent gray like congealed slush. I suppose it was to fry the bruised cabbages.
This, mind you, was what they were showing western tourists. I don’t know how the po’ folks were doing.
Stationed in Germany, I took a trip to East Berlin a couple of months before the wall fell. I went through a few of the stores. I’ll never forget the complete lack of everything.
If Americans weren’t chained to all of the world’s jetsam and the liberal America- hating meddlers, we would be living in a paradise.
I did the Berlin trip in April after the wall fell. The stores were something else. Stand in line to tell them what you wanted to buy, then stand in another line to pay for it.
Seeing buildings not fixed since WWII shows just how poor they were.
Do you remember the AFRTS PSA announcements warning about the “Trabbis” on the autobahn? LOL!
It goes back further.
In the late 70s - early 80s I had to ‘escort’ foreign students, find them lodgings, etc.
I put one group of Rumanian students in an apartment and took them to a supermarket.
When they saw the meat displays then went bonkers, got extra grocery carts and started filling them up. I asked them why. They said, “We have to get this meat before it is all gone!” I told them that their freezer was not big enough to hold all of that meat. I then told them not to worry and that the meat display would be full again tomorrow. They were not believing me. I had to take them to the supermarket the next day to show them. ;-)
No wonder Yelstin was impressed.
If you want a modern day example of the effects of socialism, go into a Venezuealan grocery store and look at all the empty shelves. You can’t even get toilet paper. Talk about epic fail. We should send all of our children, on turning 18 years of age, down to Venezuela to live for a month in one of their cities, and shop in their stores. Consider it a field trip; see what they learn. Those young folks that like it can stay there, lol. Separate the wheat from the chaff. It will be an excellent learning experience for all of them.
Read the book MIG Pilot by Viktor Belenko. As a boy, he was shown photos of Depression era food lines. But he always wondered who owned all the cars on the streets if everyone was that poor.
When he was brought to America, he thought the CIA had a fake grocery store because no one was waiting in line for food. It was only when he was able to roam America on his own that he found out how prosperous America was.
He bought some tinned meat. He couldn’t read what it said. He ate it on crackers. Friends asked him when he had gotten a cat because the tins were cat food. He kept eating because it was better than the human food in the USSR!
Back in the 70s a friend of mines grandmother visited from Yugoslavia. We took her to the local market. We walked in and she burst into tears, saying something I didn’t understand.
I asked what the problem was and my friend told me she was saying “it’s all lies...it’s all lies.”
L
Khrushchev visited the US in 1960. First to New York and the UN for his ‘bury you’ speech, then he saw a farm in Coon Rapids, Iowa.
Then on to LA where he went to a football game at the LA Coliseum. After the game he knowingly winked to the LA chief of police and complimented him on the extravagant show the chief had put on for him, especially the huge quantity of food the chief had provided for the crowd to eat. He also wondered how they had moved all the cars he saw from city to city to impress him.
He wanted to visit Disneyland but wasn’t allowed to for security reasons. It was a major diplomatic situation.
Khrushchev's due at Idlewild.
About 10 years ago I was shopping at a local store and the manager was giving directions to his meat department. They were expecting a visit from some Russian big-wig and he wanted everything from the back put out in the cases. He wanted them to see the cases packed!
I’ve read that book several times. It should be required reading for every 9th grader and again as seniors. And probably again before graduating college wouldn’t hurt anything.
Years ago I worked at the Chicago Board of Trade. A big bond trader and his brother had a Chinese doctor and his wife as their guest. They brought them on the trading floor and showed him around the different trading pits. Later that afternoon they went out to lunch at a nice restaurant then took them to a Cubs game. At about the seventh inning the two brothers went to the bathroom and when they came back the doctor was picking up discarded buns, hotdogs and other things that were thrown on the ground. He was picking then up and putting them in his pockets. When Charlie (the trader) and his brother came back Charlie saw what he was doing and said, “What are you doing? That’s garbage. If you want a hotdog I’ll buy you one, you don’t have to pick them up off the ground, throw those away” The doctor looked at Charlie and said, “In China there would be no garbage like this on the ground.” I never forgot that story. Here was a doctor from China picking up discarded food on the ground in front of his wife.
...due at Idelwid...
Car 54?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.