Posted on 06/30/2025 9:56:06 AM PDT by DallasBiff
Many Ukrainians recall the USSR with warmth and nostalgia, which is not surprising, as it was the time of their youth and prosperity. However, photographs and objective facts show that Soviet life was far from easy and carefree.
(Excerpt) Read more at eng.obozrevatel.com ...
Mamdani wants to be the next stalin.
I hate popups.
Virtually every North Korean considers Kim Jong Un to be God.
The sentiment is basically irrelevant when forced on the population through non-stop propaganda and brainwashing.
it’s the cleanest cheese shop in these parts.
Is that an anagram?
Coming soon to NYC.
Looks like some of the Universam stores on Vasiliyevskii Ostrov in Leningrad….
NYC. Heads up for youse guys if youse get madmanadi.
Went something like; Please don’t eat your children.
Brave browser blocks them: https://brave.com/download/
We had Russian SALT inspectors come by to inspect our Minuteman sites for treaty compliance in the mid 1970s. They kept asking us if our local K Mart and grocery stores were for real or just for show, for them.
I had a dedicated Stalinist bus driver on my START mission in Vypolzovo, Russia. Soviet flags everywhere on the bus, images of Stalin and Lenin...hammer and sickle enameled stars and plaques. I’d get on the bus between inspection events whistling John Phillips Sousa music and salute him with a smile on the way in. He didn’t like me very much...
In 1989 Russian president Boris Yeltsin's wide-eyed trip to a Clear Lake grocery store led to the downfall of communism.
It was Sept. 16, 1989, and Yeltsin, then newly-elected to the new Soviet parliament and the Supreme Soviet, had just visited Johnson Space Center.
At JSC, Yeltsin visited mission control and a mock-up of a space station. According to Houston Chronicle reporter Stefanie Asin, it wasn't all the screens, dials, and wonder at NASA that blew up his skirt, it was the unscheduled trip inside a nearby Randall's location.
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."
Shoppers and employees stopped him to shake his hand and say hello. In 1989, not everyone was carrying a smart phone in their pocket so Yeltsin "selfies" weren't a thing yet.
Yeltsin asked customers about what they were buying and how much it cost, later asking the store manager if one needed a special education to manage a store. 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.
"Even the Politburo doesn't have this choice. Not even Mr. Gorbachev," he said. When he was told through his interpreter that there were thousands of items in the store for sale he didn't believe it. He had even thought that the store was staged, a show for him. Little did he know there countless stores just like it all over the country, some with even more things than the Randall's he visited.
The fact that stores like these were on nearly every street corner in America amazed him. They even offered him free cheese samples.
By contrast, this is what a Russian grocery store looked like at the same time. (See: USSR: Moscow 1989 Grocery Store [YT])
According to Asin, Yeltsin didn't leave empty-handed, as he was given a small bag of goodies to enjoy on the rest of 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.
Maybe you can blame those frozen Jell-O Pudding pops he's seen marveling in those Chronicle photos.
"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."
The leader himself stepped down on the last day of 1999 after years of trying to bring a new system to Russia. The cronyism in place only managed to stifle Yeltsin's dream for his country. Corruption and perceived incompetence plague his final years in office. Leaving the Kremlin voluntarily is said to have kept him from criminal prosecution.
I saw a video where some Youtubers went to Cuba. The store shelves were pretty well stocked. Unfortunately, the entire store had like 10 items, just butt loads of them. Another thing about the video was the cars they showed lining up for gas. Not 50s Chevys and Buicks like the stereotype, there were tons of old little Datsuns and Toyotas.
Surf through youtube vids of grocery shopping in Russia, Moscow and elsewhere.
That’s the beginning of realization that abundance is the word.
Well, was not Stalin ‘all powerful’ -
blink wrong and you were sent to Siberia.
We visited East Berlin several times before the wall fell while I was stationed in West Germany. Beautiful items in the store windows, nothing for sale inside. We found that all over the city.
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.