26 ms·

Boris Yeltsin's visit to a suburban Houston supermarket in 1989 (2016)

261 points by cbracketdash 4y ago

bigmattystyles 4y ago
In the same way the assassination of Ferdinand started WW1, that is to say, both would have likely happened anyways.
- hcurtiss 4y ago
  Yes, the relative abundance produced by capitalism would have overcome the USSR/Russia even absent Yeltsin's visit. Everywhere communism has been tried, it's failed, and the most assertive efforts have led to the death of tens of millions.
  - kneebonian 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - UncleSlacky 4y ago
      Given that communism is stateless, moneyless and classless, it really wasn't real communism.
      - refurb 4y ago
        Ideas are useless if they can’t be implemented.
        UncleSlacky 4y ago
        "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?"
        refurb 4y ago
        Numerous countries have tried and failed. We gave it a go, it doesn’t work.
  - pydry 4y ago
    If USSR escaped unscathed from WW2 and America had instead been nearly destroyed we'd probably be hearing the exact opposite.
    - tekla 4y ago
      Oh yes, since Post Civil War and Pre WW2 Soviet Union was an amazingly productive economy without multiple famines and definitely didn't shoot over a million of their own citizens without a good reason.
      - pydry 4y ago
        The growth was pretty staggering, yeah. They progressed from agrarian to first man in space in 40 years.
        allarm 4y ago
        The cost of that though. My grandmother and her sister were two survivors out of five children. The rest of the kids died of hunger and sickness during random migrations between villages in 1930s. Her father lost everything he had because soviets decided it’s theirs now, so the whole family had to move someplace else to find a new home. Not everyone had made it.
        tekla 4y ago
        The growth was staggering because they stole grain and farmland from their citizens, exported it to buy machinery because the USSR couldn't manufacture themselves, which was also wasted since they didn't have the ability to keep the machines maintained properly. So yeah, turns out you can do things if you starve your people to death. (See North Korea)
        pydry 4y ago
        They industrialized fast enough to defeat the Nazis who otherwise would probably have exterminated them. The urgency and the threat they faced if they didnt industrialize quickly enough was real and existential. And yes, in order to do so they caused millions of Ukrainians to starve by exporting all of the food they grew. Exactly like Britain did to my ancestors in Ireland for profit.
sithadmin 4y ago
This was one of my childhood supermarkets. Always surreal to see the photos of Boris Yeltsin wandering around in there.
seltzered_ 4y ago
Worth noting this footage of a ussr grocery store (1990/91) : https://youtu.be/t8LtQhIQ2AE https://youtu.be/t8LtQhIQ2AE Not endorsing the article, I think it's worth thinking beyond just the economic frame and also factoring in community resilience and such. There's arguments such as from writers like Orlov: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Orlov_(writer) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Orlov_(writer)
- gumby 4y ago
  > this footage of a ussr grocery store At least they were spacious! And the small trolleys were kind: you didn't have to feel bad that yours was empty. Even developing contries' markets usually are groaning with produce. What a condemnation of the communist experiement!
  - int_19h 4y ago
    Farmer markets were a separate thing, and that's where you'd find fresh produce (and quality meat), if you could afford it. Looked something like this in late 80s: https://imgur.com/a/DAepLEJ https://imgur.com/a/DAepLEJ
    - gumby 4y ago
      Thanks, I did not know this. Look at the smile on the face of the granny in the lower photo! Did these farmers' markets operate during the communist era? Late, I presume?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- alamortsubite 4y ago
  At ~5:45 in the supermarket video, what am I looking at? Is that a Soviet TV dinner? https://youtu.be/t8LtQhIQ2AE?t=345 https://youtu.be/t8LtQhIQ2AE?t=345
  - fbarred 4y ago
binkHN 4y ago
Perhaps not that important, but this article is from 2016.
- Kaibeezy 4y ago
  It's somewhat important, although the title makes it clear the article is not about a current event. What's up with the comments in the article, though? 1 real comment, 41 spam. Is that a Blogger thing?
starwind 4y ago
Here's a picture of the store manager greeting Yeltin. Can you imagine? https://cdn.hpm.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/21152245/Paul-Yirga-Greeting-Boris-Yeltsin-1.jpg.webp https://cdn.hpm.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/21152245/Paul-...
- nazgulnarsil 4y ago
  "Well well well, looks like stocked shelves changed global geopolitics after all, didn't they?" Stocker, rolling their eyes "Yes, sir"
  - BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
    If I recall correctly, part of Yeltsin’s entourage demanded to see the man in charge of the bread department, hoping to learn about how it was kept so well stocked.
CompleteWalker 4y ago
This post is over half a decade old, I wonder what percent of American budgets are spent on groceries in 2023? More or less than 8%? There is more to this story. Freakonomics did an episode about the Cold War "Farms Race". https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-the-supermarket-helped-america-win-the-cold-war/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-the-supermarket-helped-...
- kthejoker2 4y ago
  Just looked up 2021 and 2022 in Mint, we're right at 8%, kind of interesting.
ubermonkey 4y ago
I dunno about Yeltsin and the Houston store, but I do know this: I went on a student tour of the USSR as a college student in 1991, arranged through my University (U of Alabama). I was getting a minor in Russian language, and it seemed like a fun trip. It actually got MORE fun because in the run-up to the trip (in spring, 91) there was some dissent in the USSR and many parents wouldn't let their kids go. In order to create a large enough trip, the University opened registration up to university-area retirees, so we ended up with a cohort of probably 30 folks. Half of us were under 25, and the other half over 65. It was the first time I'd ever really hung out with older people who weren't relatives, and that's really something we don't do enough of. Listen, if you have a chance to drink with WWII Hellcat pilots, do it. Anyway. Back then, you took certain American commodities with you to trade -- Levi's, Marlboros, etc. We met a pair of enterprising young black marketeers -- our age -- in Moscow, and hit off so well with them that they met us in (what was then) Leningrad for our last port of call. It was very cool, trying to converse in broken Russian and English, and generally being over the moon to have "friends" from the other side of the Cold War that defined both our countries up to then. It went so well with Andrei and Volodya that, somehow, they finagled visas, and the next fall came to Tuscaloosa to visit us. Andrei immediately took up with my girlfriend's pal, but Volodya was shyer and stayed with Cassie and I for several weeks. And during that time -- and this would've been fall 91 into winter 92 -- obviously we did some shopping. I remember vividly taking Volodya to the local supermarket, where we bought the sorts of cheap things students buy. Except obviously our budgets as upper-middle-class college kids allowed us things absurdly beyond the reach of anybody Volodya knew in Moscow -- like fresh fruit and vegetables in January. He was stunned, and we were kind of shamed by the plenty we had access to. Then he saw the bananas. He really wanted bananas. He wouldn't ask for bananas. So I grabbed a bunch and put them in the basket. "Are you rich?" No. I have a good student job. "Are your parents in government?" No. My dad's dead; Cassie's dad is a doctor in another state. "Anyone can shop here?" Absolutely. I don't pretend for a moment the US was then, or is now, some kind of paradise. We fail our poor in material and constant ways. But those moments in the Bruno's with Volodya are something I'll never forget.
- throwawayabcvd 4y ago
  [flagged]
advisedwang 4y ago
It's naive to imagine Yeltsin's mind was really changed by a spontaneous visit. He didn't have intelligence on what a US supermarket was like? The premiere of a superpower just randomly decided to visit a grocery store? No. Yeltsin was contemplating reforms and changes and wanted to collect a political tool he could later user if needed. He knew exactly how this visit would go, and it was intended so he could use it as rhetorical device to illustrate the necessity of reforms.
- luckylion 4y ago
  Who knows. At least according to (then Germany's chancellor) Helmut Schmidt, at an official visit of Brezhnev where he had invited him to his private home in Hamburg, Brezhnev was flabbergasted that the German chancellor could live in an average home, next to normal people, without walls and hundreds of soldiers separating them.
  - Thlom 4y ago
    We have the same story in Norway. Apparently Nikita Khrusjtsjov visited then prime minister Einar Gerhardsen in his small and modest housing association apartment in 1964 and subsequently demanded to know where Gerhardsen REALLY lived, cause he couldn't imagine the prime minister living in a normal apartment in a normal apartment building. But he did and lived in the same apartment until his death in 1987.
    - luckylion 4y ago
      It might be a matter of Soviet diplomacy to act surprised. Is the story with Gerhardsen relayed by him / officials? Schmidt told it himself, so at least it's not something somebody made up and everybody repeated it because it's such a nice story, unless he himself made it up. He wasn't the type, but who knows.
      - Thlom 4y ago
        The story has been told by his son, but I think it is confirmed by several sources. I don't think Gerhardsen himself ever told it publicly.
alamortsubite 4y ago
This sounds apocryphal. I don't doubt Yeltsin was impressed by his visit to the supermarket, but by 1989 the writing was more than on the wall for the demise of the USSR. I imagine it'd be more accurate to say that Yeltsin was excited by the prospects of a transformed economy, seeing the prosperity of the U.S. firsthand, rather than his visit being any kind of tipping point in the Soviet Union's downfall. Anyway, Robin Williams predicted it all five years before Yeltsin's trip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHIcmoY3_lE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHIcmoY3_lE
- avgcorrection 4y ago
  Who even cares? It’s Boris Yeltsin, famous good guy and Russian patriot who definitely had a positive income on Russia. Only Cold War-pilled Westerners would think that this would sound like a good story.
- rippercushions 4y ago
  Straight from the horse's mouth: > In Yeltsin’s own autobiography, he wrote about the experience at Randall’s, which shattered his view of communism
  - lolinder 4y ago
    That's not straight from the horse's mouth, you left off the attribution (emphasis added): > In Yeltsin’s own autobiography, he wrote about the experience at Randall’s, which shattered his view of communism, according to pundits. From that paragraph it sounds like "pundits" are the ones saying it shattered his view of communism, not the autobiography itself. (Edit: to be fair, that sentence is a really awkward attribution sandwich, so I can see how it might have confused.)
    - maxerickson 4y ago
      He wrote "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. 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." Pundits aren't super far out over their skis. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6kh3dw/ive_heard_that_yeltsin_was_famously_shocked_by/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6kh3dw/ive_h... https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When-Boris-Yeltsin-went-grocery-shopping-in-Clear-5759129.php https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When...
franky47 4y ago
With the first source linked in the article being Breitbart, I'd take the rest of the content with a pinch of salt.
jahnu 4y ago
Adam Curtis’ most recent work, Traumazone, aims to capture some of the feeling of what it was like to go through the collapse of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the “capitalism” that followed. I found it very powerful and helped me empathise better with those citizens and leaders. Watching Gorbechev and Yeltsin struggle and try their best to navigate the disaster. It’s quite different from his previous works. He doesn’t narrate. I personally think it’s a masterpiece in alternative documentary making. https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/traumazone-2022/ https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/traumazone-2022/
avgcorrection 4y ago
The author seems to believe that Yeltsin was a moron who thought that the most advanced capitalist country in history would possibly be comparable to a country that belonged to the Tsar less than one hundred years prior. Well, maybe he was an idiot.
- helloworld11 4y ago
  Your comment glosses over so many complex dynamics of how the USSR failed and mismanaged its way into how it was in the late 80's vs. the U.S (and many other major countries) that it's absurd. Of course Yeltsin understood that his own country had dealt with many problems that the U.S had never had to face, but this didn't blind him to the fact that they could have done much better after so many decades of propaganda, and failed to do so because of many self-created problems. The smack to the face that was the supermarket showed him just how far his huge country had fallen behind. It was not stupidity in "failing to compare plausibly" that affected him, it was seeing that even fundamental aspects of well-being were inexcusably failing in the USSR. Your comment is very blind to this basic fact, and excuses atrocious mismanagement with platitudes about tsars. Germany and Japan, as well as China, were absolute wastelands of ruin and destitution after the second world war, and had suffered decades of terribly backwards previous leadership, yet they made good on enormous well-being changes in much less time than the USSR had to do the same by the time of Yeltsin's supermarket visit.
  - avgcorrection 4y ago
    > Your comment glosses over so many complex dynamics of how the USSR failed and mismanaged its way into how it was in the late 80's vs. the U.S (and many other major countries) that it's absurd. My comment glosses over. Compared to an anecdote about how a supermarket visit “Brought Down the Soviet Union”? This is the thing that you leaped to respond to? You are dripping with hypocrisy. That low-quality article deserves no more rebuttal than the sentences that I spared on it.
    - helloworld11 4y ago
      It's not just the anecdote, it's everything that it implies, based on decades of history books, literature, many other anecdotes (some excellent ones right here in this thread). A cheap comment that dismisses complex things in its criticism of a complex thing isn't any less facile for pretending to be lightly stated.
dimitar 4y ago
The collapse of the USSR wasn't caused by economics or arms races - see how regimes like Cuba, North Korea still survive. Low oil prices helped, but it could have happened during a boom, too. The 80s were not the worst economic or humanitarian crisis the USSR has faced, not even close. The Soviet Union collapsed because the Party lost control of the country and the tensions and outright conflicts that previously prevented any challenge to its power tore up the country. It was conflicts between the nationalities, competition between bureaucrats of different levels over resources, the young Komsomol chiefs against the old gerontocrats, Moscow against the Russian regions, the Soviet Army against the KGB, the religious against the state atheism, innumerable other conflicts, with probably the ethnic/national conflicts having the most intensity. The USSR found out it couldn't control its own population and that is why it retreated from Eastern European countries as well. The party lost control because of glasnost and perestroika which unleashed all the contradictions and conflict at once, which further caused chaos. It is no accident that the Communist party got itself banned in both Russia and Ukraine. In comparison China didn't try glasnost and did incremental and initially isolated economic reforms, with agriculture still being restricted to family farms to this day. The USA didn't win the Cold War or cause the USSRs collapse, most of the time the policy was containment or even reapproachment, not rollback.
- Aloha 4y ago
  The only way they could have kept control of the country was to descend closer to 'hermit kingdom' like North Korea, had the economy produced even at 2/3rds of what the US did on a per capita basis, the Union would still exist as is. We (the US) were able to trigger an arms race at a time when the Union was least able to afford it, and overwhelm what central planning could deal with.
LarryMullins 4y ago
The biography of Viktor Belenko [0], a Soviet Mig-25 pilot who defected to America by way of Japan in 1976, has a story about him being shown around the US by some government handlers and disbelieving the grocery store he was taken to, until being shown several more like it. He thought at first that the grocery store was staged, or an unusual example and not the norm. [0] Mig Pilot by John Barron
- mannerheim 4y ago
  Same guy found American cat food better quality than the canned food in the USSR, and fed some to his guests on a couple occasions.
Tiktaalik 4y ago
There's a similar story of years earlier Mikhail Gorbachev visiting a Canadian grocery and being surprised and impressed. https://www.tvo.org/article/in-1983-gorbachev-took-a-stroll-in-small-town-ontario-that-helped-shape-the-future-of-the-soviet https://www.tvo.org/article/in-1983-gorbachev-took-a-stroll-...
- alamortsubite 4y ago
  This is a much better article. It rings truer to the spirit of OP's post, whose timeline I think is too advanced to be believable; by '89 the tide had already turned.
stevespang 4y ago
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adamfeldman 4y ago
Someone wrote and produced a retelling of this story as an opera. It was hilarious. https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/shows/houston-matters/2020/02/21/361467/boris-yelstins-1989-visit-to-a-houston-grocery-store-is-now-an-opera/ https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/shows/houston-ma...
11thEarlOfMar 4y ago
It appears that the situation in Russia is much improved and Boris would likely feel the transition he initiated brought them close to parity in terms of availability and variety: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2DBFaucddw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2DBFaucddw
black_13 4y ago
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robswc 4y ago
I have some extended family from Eastern European countries. It's just so unfortunate what happened. The road to hell, paved with good intentions. They're normal people stuck picking up the pieces of a failed regime. Even with some things being adjusted, it might take weeks to comfortably afford what a typical SDE could afford in an hour here. No idea how people in the west romanticize it or say it was a good thing. I've even seen hostility directed towards Eastern Europeans living in the west (almost exclusively from radical college kids) joking about how they got what they deserved or anyone that ran from the USSR was a greedy business person and that the stories are made up.
- jvnnmfjvfjvflkj 4y ago
  They say this about Cubans in Miami too.
  - robswc 4y ago
    Yep. Blows my mind. I feel like many people just forget the difference between real life and internet sometimes. We're talking about people that risked their lives to escape a system. Not your political opponents on twitter.
paulpauper 4y ago
No fan of the USSR but that photo is not entirely arcuate here is what it looked like https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0c/56/2d/0c562d975c99e89786ecc26cbdc8af4a.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0c/56/2d/0c562d975c99e89786ec... not much different from food stores in the US during the 40s. Maybe blandness is a worthwhile trade off it is means less obesity and other ill of modern diets.
- genocidicbunny 4y ago
  There were very few markets that looked like that, most of them heavily concentrated in the two biggest cities of Moscow and Leningrad. There were plenty of towns where even in the mid-to-late 90's people would have been surprised to see a market like this.
- RomanPushkin 4y ago
  My dad had to drive 65 miles (by public transportation only with multiple stops) to get into one of these stores. You weren't allowed to buy over certain amount of groceries unless you have permission slip ("kartochka"). Permission slip specifies the number of children you have. And even with "kartochka" it wasn't that too much food you could buy anyway. Also, as a child growing up mostly in outskirts of Moscow region (oblast), I don't remember even visiting one of these stores. I was about 20 y.o. (now 40) when I first saw a supermarket similar to this one in the town 65 miles from Moscow where I grew up. Also, it doesn't mean everything was that bad, or we haven't had enough food on the table. Most of the food was unprocessed and simple, and the most was from farmers. For example, there was no to little cheese, but there was meat, and milk, and veggies. I have to admit that a large number of meat (especially chicken) was a humanitarian assistance (notorious "nozhki Busha" - Bush's chicken legs).
richk449 4y ago
If you find this story interesting, I strongly recommend you read the new biography of Gorbachev: https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393647013 https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393647013 By the time Yeltsin visited that grocery store, Gorbachev had been working for decades to put himself into a position of power so that he could carefully shift the USSR to a liberal Democratic government with a market economy. The fact that he actually got himself into position to execute this plan is mind blowing. I don’t think I have ever read a book which so radically reshapes how I view a piece of history.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  Here's another thing to blow your mind: Gorbachev was the only Russian leader in history that resigned himself quietly, and then lived his life as a normal person. In all of Russian history. You could argue that Medvedev did, too, but this increasingly deranged puppet is sort of back in politics now.
aiqq 4y ago
Now russians have everything they wish and more yet behave like barbarians. Some cultures never change and they wish the same for everyone in their neighbourhood. Perhaps karma and sanctions will revert that country to the state they deserve.
Animats 4y ago
Ah, the glory days of America. Yesterday, the local market was out of eggs and bananas. There were long lines at too few staffed checkouts. There's a homeless encampment in the mall's parking area. This is in Silicon Valley.
- xwdv 4y ago
  The only solace I find as Americans crumble into poverty and wage slavery is that there is no real better alternative in the world today. The entire world’s glory days are behind it, every place is getting shitty. Everything is expensive and few people are thriving. The future looks joyless and barely survivable. To me the explanation for why everything got shitty all at once is obvious: the global pandemic “synchronized” all nations and produced hardship everywhere simultaneously. Fragile systems in every country were strained.
  - vl 4y ago
    By any possible metric people in the world today live better than in any point in history. Sure, last two years created a minor setback, but it will be forgotten in the next few years, when there will be another "everything is good and will grow forever" period in the cycle.
    - stjohnswarts 4y ago
      Some people have bought into the captalism "always bad" trope regurgitated over and over in r/antiwork on reddit. I just tune out when I hear "wage slavery"
- pjscott 4y ago
  Sounds like a combination of (a) panic-buying of commodities that people heard were in short supply, similar to the Great Toilet Paper Incident, and (b) local government that doesn't do anything about homeless encampments in mall parking lots. Over in my part of America, and as far as I can tell most parts of America, things go on as usual but with higher prices for some foods.
- 4y ago
diimdeep 4y ago
The first part of the article I can relate to, but how it tied to the conclusion and this: “the average Russian spends about 50% of their income on food.” — is utter nonsense. Here is on the napkin calculation of grocery basket to salary from retail and service sources[0] for central region: 5600 ₽ * 100 / 62000 ₽ => 9,0323 % [0] MOEX:FIVE https://www.x5.ru/ru/PublishingImages/Pages/Media/News/Index/Index_1Q2022.pdf https://www.x5.ru/ru/PublishingImages/Pages/Media/News/Index... [1] MOEX:HHR https://stats.hh.ru/central_federal_district https://stats.hh.ru/central_federal_district And here is the 2022 state of supermarkets in Russia: [2] Typical near apartment supermarket, only of this retail chain there is, 18300 of these in country https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTy04V1bTDs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTy04V1bTDs [3] Hypermarket https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kG9yfCwG_s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kG9yfCwG_s
- throwaway290 4y ago
  I am from somewhat medium class but not poor background and I know very few people who earn that much, is that advertised as average monthly salary? Maybe they need to check the median? (The first link wouldn't load for me.) Edit: fwiw friend about to receive a degree in economy says 62000 is basically a bullshit number for a single person, and if they are talking families well 5600 is also (it may be enough for one person to survive without eating out but not a family). Does not compute.
  - diimdeep 4y ago
    You can browse https://stats.hh.ru https://stats.hh.ru by yourself, sure salary differs by region and occupation, but it is even much higher for educated or just hard-working people, especially in tech. How is it bullshit, exactly ? (Only way I can think if you compare really low wage gov clerk with high tech worker and then average (50000 + 250000) / 2 = 150000 but it is not the case)
    - throwaway290 4y ago
      You chose the worst place to get your numbers. Try browsing avito and see if any of the 10000 rub/month flats in city center are available. The numbers are there only to attract you. But for the record none of the .ru links you gave work for me currently. Does hh even host a representative amount of jobs for cleaning staff, shop salesperson, cooks and other jobs many regular people have? How many people don't have the chance to work for good clean money and get by with gigs or grey salaries? Consider that, double monthly food expense and it may be not 50 percent but not too far. It may be hard to grasp if you happen to be in a muscovite software engineer bubble.
danielodievich 4y ago
Few years into our emigration to USA, my family brought my grandfather over to USA. He was a blue collar worker, electrician at the cement factory, entering that profession right after the war, which he spent under the occupation and mostly I think as a shepherd for cows and pigs in what is now Belarus. He has built several houses in his life and was always incredibly handy with tools. We took him to Home Depot. He looked around, stood silently for a while, and then cried. His words were "we have wasted so much our lives". Trading for nails and building materials, scrounging and scratching out a living, while the country spent all the money on weapons (currently being burned out in Ukraine, and good riddance) As my father told my then girlfriend and now wife, Soviet Union was okay for us growing up there because we didn't know any better.
- pavlov 4y ago
  Now the challenge for us is that we’re still stuck thinking stores full of Chinese junk is the pinnacle of civilization and we’re unable to know any better despite accumulating evidence of planetary destruction.
  - jhoechtl 4y ago
    But where lies the middle ground? Soviets having one sort of butter vs. 20 sorts of butter (yoghurt, drills, ...) many of which were produced abroad? Maybe we can correct (economic) future by simply insourcing some goods and therefore work and forget about the knowledge society boloney?
    - bendbro 4y ago
      You'll be called a fascist if you develop this view.
      - gotorazor 4y ago
        communist
    - jjeaff 4y ago
cat_plus_plus 4y ago
Gorbachev's take was "let's think it through and hear all opinions and then decide what should be done about long term future of USSR". Yelsin dropped "let's think it through". Although privatisation of state enterprise by distributing vouchers to all citizens has merit on paper, one must ensure that population is educated about realistic ups and downs of stocks and is given some basic security to make long term rational decisions. Putin dropped "hear all opinions" The rest is history. West should have bailed our Russia through some equivalent of Marshall plan to avoid present day situation.
- yourapostasy 4y ago
  > West should have bailed our Russia through some equivalent of Marshall plan... Definitely should have. However, it would have fell into the lap of the US to give the lion’s share and I remain unpersuaded the US had at that time the economic strength to pull that off without putting itself into an existentially compromising posture. Politically I doubt the Russian Federation would have consented to the kind of terms Germany and Japan did for the Marshall Plan and GARIOA respectively. The Marshall plan was offered to and declined by the USSR, and they declined on behalf of USSR Eastern European satellites, so there were marketing hooks to revive a Marshall Plan. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out informal overtures were made for a similar plan and rebuffed by the Russian Federation; after all NATO membership was briefly and informally broached. I suspect the Cold War wore out both opponents, and for the US it was a closer call than many admit today. Much like WW2 in the first half of US involvement was a pretty close call that was only admitted much later.
  - cat_plus_plus 4y ago
    US in early 90s way WAY healthier than US today, on the verge of dot com boom, and aid we would have provided would not be 100% loss like military aid to Ukraine today. What was needed is to give some kind of alternative work to employees of state enterprises, who were willing to work for very little money and had some skills. We ended up doing the same for China, only without any strategic goals and time limits. As a result, mid America now just about needs a Marshall plan itself to prevent political instability.
cfn 4y ago
Back in 1989 I, by chance, took a Russian univeristy professor that was visiting Portugal to the largest supermarket in Lisbon. As far as I rememmber, we had to buy some food to take home and cook her a meal and the supermarket was in the way. As we waited in line to pay she asked us if she could go for another walk by herself. She said that the supermarket was like a cathedral to her. That was when it dawned on me, having been in the USSR before, the shock she was going through.
- contingencies 4y ago
  The modern Chinese relationship to foreign retail distribution operations such as Germany's Metro, France's Carrefour, the US's Walmart and Sam's Club and even Swedish IKEA could also be framed in this light.
_5yv8 4y ago
It isn’t really useful to compare the Soviet Union in it’s final 1-2 years of total crisis to the USA. You see videos of empty supermarkets, lines and many other problems. But this certainly is not an accurate depiction of normal life during most of the Soviet period. The 70s and early 80s did not have a lot of the problems that arose in 1989.
- thriftwy 4y ago
  Soviet Union was rolling downhill starting from 1965, with lines and empty stalls. "Иван Васильевич меняет профессию[1]" is a 1973 movie and it depicts shortages, scarcity of consumer goods and "having to know people" to get decent service. 1. http://imdb.com/title/tt0070233 http://imdb.com/title/tt0070233
- dmitriid 4y ago
  > The 70s and early 80s did not have a lot of the problems that arose in 1989. In late 1980s the systemic problem became a problem everywhere. However, food stamps were already a thing in some regions in mid-1970s. And the "sausage trains" were a well-known phenomenon since at least early 70s. This was a term for the trains that people would take to buy stuff in larger cities like Moscow that didn't exist in smaller cities like Ryazan or Tver.
  - thriftwy 4y ago
    To note, "smaller city" are still a half million population province capitals. It's not the smaller towns where people could live off the land for the most part.
WoodenChair 4y ago
For those of you who don't have family who escaped from Cold War era Eastern European communism, you should have the added context that this is actually a pretty commonly shared experience—and even something of a trope. My mom and grandparents upon going to a Canadian supermarket for the first time after escaping from communist Czechoslovakia in the late 1960s couldn't believe it. They were used to stores that only sold a few products and eating oranges once a year at Christmas. Of course conditions varied within different eastern bloc countries and even at a local level, but the general thrust of the theme is recurrent.
- timeon 4y ago
  I grew up in 80s Czechoslovakia. I do not remember empty shelves like those in the article but other then that yes. Oranges on Christmas. Fewer things in general - shops were smaller. You had to stand in line for several days if you wanted to buy a car (Škoda). You had no idea what color it would be once it was your turn. Most groceries we had was homemade especially meat and vegetables. You could buy some stuff from west but from specific shop [0]. You had to have special currency for this that could be obtained on black market. People are now used to have anything on demand. But they are also used to shitty things like tasteless tomatoes (in case of supermarkets not only during winter). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuzex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuzex
too_much_churn 4y ago
The main thrust of the comments here seems to be defending against the idea that Yeltsin was genuinely surprised. It's sad to me because this indicates that the main lessons from this very dark period of "real existing socialism" haven't been learned. Oh well, maybe next time!
eddy_chan 4y ago
I'm from Australia and I was blown away by a run of the mill H-E-B supermarket in 2022. The size, scale, selection was quadruple what I'm used to at home. A co-founder took me to when I visited him in Fort Worth and I joked that I felt like Yeltsin visiting.
cosmodisk 4y ago
Having been born under the Soviet occupation and witnessing it for a few years before the the whole thing collapsed, it was the German mail order catalogs that made most people realise how bad we had. So the soviet union collapses, there's litterly nothing to buy, huge unemployment,etc. But some start going to western Europe (especially Germany) and suddenly you go from only seeing crappy russian made stuff to Japanese VHS players, proper audio systems, clothing that looks cool and comfy. I used to scroll those catalogs for hours thinking how the hell Germans have so much stuff+ trying to convert deuchmarks to our own currency just to realise that it would take my dad's entire salary just to buy some of of those things in the catalog. The beginning of 90s was crazy: we started having these black plastic carrier bags with celebrities printed on them- it was insanely popular thing to buy! I remember we had this guy in a wheelchair in our town - someone brought him a proper baseball hat from the US, people kept talking about it for weeks how he's the only one with this hat( some jackass took the hat from the poor guy a few weeks later). We were litterly decades behind. And then wild capitalism started. By the end of 90s, the country had more or less anything you could buy in western countries. Looking back,even though I was just a little kid back then,the progress we made in three decades is insane.
FatActor 4y ago
As a U.S.-er, this is how I feel when I see Europe with their health care.
throw_away1525 4y ago
Yeltsin should have had a chat with the cashiers. How many days of vacation do they get? How many days of sick leave? How many days of maternity leave? Do they have health insurance? Can they be laid off without notice, or fired without cause? USA cashier: 0/0/0/no/yes Soviet cashier: 22/infinite/18 months/yes/no Oh, but the variety of items on the shelves!!!

261 points by cbracketdash 4y ago

bigmattystyles 4y ago

In the same way the assassination of Ferdinand started WW1, that is to say, both would have likely happened anyways.

hcurtiss 4y ago
Yes, the relative abundance produced by capitalism would have overcome the USSR/Russia even absent Yeltsin's visit. Everywhere communism has been tried, it's failed, and the most assertive efforts have led to the death of tens of millions.
- kneebonian 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - UncleSlacky 4y ago
    Given that communism is stateless, moneyless and classless, it really wasn't real communism.
    - refurb 4y ago
      Ideas are useless if they can’t be implemented.
      - UncleSlacky 4y ago
        "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?"
        refurb 4y ago
        Numerous countries have tried and failed. We gave it a go, it doesn’t work.
- pydry 4y ago
  If USSR escaped unscathed from WW2 and America had instead been nearly destroyed we'd probably be hearing the exact opposite.
  - tekla 4y ago
    Oh yes, since Post Civil War and Pre WW2 Soviet Union was an amazingly productive economy without multiple famines and definitely didn't shoot over a million of their own citizens without a good reason.
    - pydry 4y ago
      The growth was pretty staggering, yeah. They progressed from agrarian to first man in space in 40 years.
      - allarm 4y ago
        The cost of that though. My grandmother and her sister were two survivors out of five children. The rest of the kids died of hunger and sickness during random migrations between villages in 1930s. Her father lost everything he had because soviets decided it’s theirs now, so the whole family had to move someplace else to find a new home. Not everyone had made it.
      - tekla 4y ago
        The growth was staggering because they stole grain and farmland from their citizens, exported it to buy machinery because the USSR couldn't manufacture themselves, which was also wasted since they didn't have the ability to keep the machines maintained properly. So yeah, turns out you can do things if you starve your people to death. (See North Korea)
        pydry 4y ago
        They industrialized fast enough to defeat the Nazis who otherwise would probably have exterminated them. The urgency and the threat they faced if they didnt industrialize quickly enough was real and existential. And yes, in order to do so they caused millions of Ukrainians to starve by exporting all of the food they grew. Exactly like Britain did to my ancestors in Ireland for profit.

sithadmin 4y ago

This was one of my childhood supermarkets. Always surreal to see the photos of Boris Yeltsin wandering around in there.

seltzered_ 4y ago

Worth noting this footage of a ussr grocery store (1990/91) : https://youtu.be/t8LtQhIQ2AE https://youtu.be/t8LtQhIQ2AE Not endorsing the article, I think it's worth thinking beyond just the economic frame and also factoring in community resilience and such. There's arguments such as from writers like Orlov: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Orlov_(writer) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Orlov_(writer)

gumby 4y ago
> this footage of a ussr grocery store At least they were spacious! And the small trolleys were kind: you didn't have to feel bad that yours was empty. Even developing contries' markets usually are groaning with produce. What a condemnation of the communist experiement!
- int_19h 4y ago
  Farmer markets were a separate thing, and that's where you'd find fresh produce (and quality meat), if you could afford it. Looked something like this in late 80s: https://imgur.com/a/DAepLEJ https://imgur.com/a/DAepLEJ
  - gumby 4y ago
    Thanks, I did not know this. Look at the smile on the face of the granny in the lower photo! Did these farmers' markets operate during the communist era? Late, I presume?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
alamortsubite 4y ago
At ~5:45 in the supermarket video, what am I looking at? Is that a Soviet TV dinner? https://youtu.be/t8LtQhIQ2AE?t=345 https://youtu.be/t8LtQhIQ2AE?t=345
- fbarred 4y ago

binkHN 4y ago

Perhaps not that important, but this article is from 2016.

Kaibeezy 4y ago
It's somewhat important, although the title makes it clear the article is not about a current event. What's up with the comments in the article, though? 1 real comment, 41 spam. Is that a Blogger thing?

starwind 4y ago

Here's a picture of the store manager greeting Yeltin. Can you imagine? https://cdn.hpm.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/21152245/Paul-Yirga-Greeting-Boris-Yeltsin-1.jpg.webp https://cdn.hpm.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/21152245/Paul-...

nazgulnarsil 4y ago
"Well well well, looks like stocked shelves changed global geopolitics after all, didn't they?" Stocker, rolling their eyes "Yes, sir"
- BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
  If I recall correctly, part of Yeltsin’s entourage demanded to see the man in charge of the bread department, hoping to learn about how it was kept so well stocked.

CompleteWalker 4y ago

This post is over half a decade old, I wonder what percent of American budgets are spent on groceries in 2023? More or less than 8%? There is more to this story. Freakonomics did an episode about the Cold War "Farms Race". https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-the-supermarket-helped-america-win-the-cold-war/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-the-supermarket-helped-...

kthejoker2 4y ago
Just looked up 2021 and 2022 in Mint, we're right at 8%, kind of interesting.

ubermonkey 4y ago

I dunno about Yeltsin and the Houston store, but I do know this: I went on a student tour of the USSR as a college student in 1991, arranged through my University (U of Alabama). I was getting a minor in Russian language, and it seemed like a fun trip. It actually got MORE fun because in the run-up to the trip (in spring, 91) there was some dissent in the USSR and many parents wouldn't let their kids go. In order to create a large enough trip, the University opened registration up to university-area retirees, so we ended up with a cohort of probably 30 folks. Half of us were under 25, and the other half over 65. It was the first time I'd ever really hung out with older people who weren't relatives, and that's really something we don't do enough of. Listen, if you have a chance to drink with WWII Hellcat pilots, do it. Anyway. Back then, you took certain American commodities with you to trade -- Levi's, Marlboros, etc. We met a pair of enterprising young black marketeers -- our age -- in Moscow, and hit off so well with them that they met us in (what was then) Leningrad for our last port of call. It was very cool, trying to converse in broken Russian and English, and generally being over the moon to have "friends" from the other side of the Cold War that defined both our countries up to then. It went so well with Andrei and Volodya that, somehow, they finagled visas, and the next fall came to Tuscaloosa to visit us. Andrei immediately took up with my girlfriend's pal, but Volodya was shyer and stayed with Cassie and I for several weeks. And during that time -- and this would've been fall 91 into winter 92 -- obviously we did some shopping. I remember vividly taking Volodya to the local supermarket, where we bought the sorts of cheap things students buy. Except obviously our budgets as upper-middle-class college kids allowed us things absurdly beyond the reach of anybody Volodya knew in Moscow -- like fresh fruit and vegetables in January. He was stunned, and we were kind of shamed by the plenty we had access to. Then he saw the bananas. He really wanted bananas. He wouldn't ask for bananas. So I grabbed a bunch and put them in the basket. "Are you rich?" No. I have a good student job. "Are your parents in government?" No. My dad's dead; Cassie's dad is a doctor in another state. "Anyone can shop here?" Absolutely. I don't pretend for a moment the US was then, or is now, some kind of paradise. We fail our poor in material and constant ways. But those moments in the Bruno's with Volodya are something I'll never forget.

throwawayabcvd 4y ago
[flagged]

advisedwang 4y ago

It's naive to imagine Yeltsin's mind was really changed by a spontaneous visit. He didn't have intelligence on what a US supermarket was like? The premiere of a superpower just randomly decided to visit a grocery store? No. Yeltsin was contemplating reforms and changes and wanted to collect a political tool he could later user if needed. He knew exactly how this visit would go, and it was intended so he could use it as rhetorical device to illustrate the necessity of reforms.

luckylion 4y ago
Who knows. At least according to (then Germany's chancellor) Helmut Schmidt, at an official visit of Brezhnev where he had invited him to his private home in Hamburg, Brezhnev was flabbergasted that the German chancellor could live in an average home, next to normal people, without walls and hundreds of soldiers separating them.
- Thlom 4y ago
  We have the same story in Norway. Apparently Nikita Khrusjtsjov visited then prime minister Einar Gerhardsen in his small and modest housing association apartment in 1964 and subsequently demanded to know where Gerhardsen REALLY lived, cause he couldn't imagine the prime minister living in a normal apartment in a normal apartment building. But he did and lived in the same apartment until his death in 1987.
  - luckylion 4y ago
    It might be a matter of Soviet diplomacy to act surprised. Is the story with Gerhardsen relayed by him / officials? Schmidt told it himself, so at least it's not something somebody made up and everybody repeated it because it's such a nice story, unless he himself made it up. He wasn't the type, but who knows.
    - Thlom 4y ago
      The story has been told by his son, but I think it is confirmed by several sources. I don't think Gerhardsen himself ever told it publicly.

alamortsubite 4y ago

This sounds apocryphal. I don't doubt Yeltsin was impressed by his visit to the supermarket, but by 1989 the writing was more than on the wall for the demise of the USSR. I imagine it'd be more accurate to say that Yeltsin was excited by the prospects of a transformed economy, seeing the prosperity of the U.S. firsthand, rather than his visit being any kind of tipping point in the Soviet Union's downfall. Anyway, Robin Williams predicted it all five years before Yeltsin's trip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHIcmoY3_lE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHIcmoY3_lE

avgcorrection 4y ago
Who even cares? It’s Boris Yeltsin, famous good guy and Russian patriot who definitely had a positive income on Russia. Only Cold War-pilled Westerners would think that this would sound like a good story.
rippercushions 4y ago
Straight from the horse's mouth: > In Yeltsin’s own autobiography, he wrote about the experience at Randall’s, which shattered his view of communism
- lolinder 4y ago
  That's not straight from the horse's mouth, you left off the attribution (emphasis added): > In Yeltsin’s own autobiography, he wrote about the experience at Randall’s, which shattered his view of communism, according to pundits. From that paragraph it sounds like "pundits" are the ones saying it shattered his view of communism, not the autobiography itself. (Edit: to be fair, that sentence is a really awkward attribution sandwich, so I can see how it might have confused.)
  - maxerickson 4y ago
    He wrote "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. 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." Pundits aren't super far out over their skis. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6kh3dw/ive_heard_that_yeltsin_was_famously_shocked_by/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6kh3dw/ive_h... https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When-Boris-Yeltsin-went-grocery-shopping-in-Clear-5759129.php https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When...

franky47 4y ago

With the first source linked in the article being Breitbart, I'd take the rest of the content with a pinch of salt.

jahnu 4y ago

Adam Curtis’ most recent work, Traumazone, aims to capture some of the feeling of what it was like to go through the collapse of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the “capitalism” that followed. I found it very powerful and helped me empathise better with those citizens and leaders. Watching Gorbechev and Yeltsin struggle and try their best to navigate the disaster. It’s quite different from his previous works. He doesn’t narrate. I personally think it’s a masterpiece in alternative documentary making. https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/traumazone-2022/ https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/traumazone-2022/

avgcorrection 4y ago

The author seems to believe that Yeltsin was a moron who thought that the most advanced capitalist country in history would possibly be comparable to a country that belonged to the Tsar less than one hundred years prior. Well, maybe he was an idiot.

helloworld11 4y ago
Your comment glosses over so many complex dynamics of how the USSR failed and mismanaged its way into how it was in the late 80's vs. the U.S (and many other major countries) that it's absurd. Of course Yeltsin understood that his own country had dealt with many problems that the U.S had never had to face, but this didn't blind him to the fact that they could have done much better after so many decades of propaganda, and failed to do so because of many self-created problems. The smack to the face that was the supermarket showed him just how far his huge country had fallen behind. It was not stupidity in "failing to compare plausibly" that affected him, it was seeing that even fundamental aspects of well-being were inexcusably failing in the USSR. Your comment is very blind to this basic fact, and excuses atrocious mismanagement with platitudes about tsars. Germany and Japan, as well as China, were absolute wastelands of ruin and destitution after the second world war, and had suffered decades of terribly backwards previous leadership, yet they made good on enormous well-being changes in much less time than the USSR had to do the same by the time of Yeltsin's supermarket visit.
- avgcorrection 4y ago
  > Your comment glosses over so many complex dynamics of how the USSR failed and mismanaged its way into how it was in the late 80's vs. the U.S (and many other major countries) that it's absurd. My comment glosses over. Compared to an anecdote about how a supermarket visit “Brought Down the Soviet Union”? This is the thing that you leaped to respond to? You are dripping with hypocrisy. That low-quality article deserves no more rebuttal than the sentences that I spared on it.
  - helloworld11 4y ago
    It's not just the anecdote, it's everything that it implies, based on decades of history books, literature, many other anecdotes (some excellent ones right here in this thread). A cheap comment that dismisses complex things in its criticism of a complex thing isn't any less facile for pretending to be lightly stated.

dimitar 4y ago

The collapse of the USSR wasn't caused by economics or arms races - see how regimes like Cuba, North Korea still survive. Low oil prices helped, but it could have happened during a boom, too. The 80s were not the worst economic or humanitarian crisis the USSR has faced, not even close. The Soviet Union collapsed because the Party lost control of the country and the tensions and outright conflicts that previously prevented any challenge to its power tore up the country. It was conflicts between the nationalities, competition between bureaucrats of different levels over resources, the young Komsomol chiefs against the old gerontocrats, Moscow against the Russian regions, the Soviet Army against the KGB, the religious against the state atheism, innumerable other conflicts, with probably the ethnic/national conflicts having the most intensity. The USSR found out it couldn't control its own population and that is why it retreated from Eastern European countries as well. The party lost control because of glasnost and perestroika which unleashed all the contradictions and conflict at once, which further caused chaos. It is no accident that the Communist party got itself banned in both Russia and Ukraine. In comparison China didn't try glasnost and did incremental and initially isolated economic reforms, with agriculture still being restricted to family farms to this day. The USA didn't win the Cold War or cause the USSRs collapse, most of the time the policy was containment or even reapproachment, not rollback.

Aloha 4y ago
The only way they could have kept control of the country was to descend closer to 'hermit kingdom' like North Korea, had the economy produced even at 2/3rds of what the US did on a per capita basis, the Union would still exist as is. We (the US) were able to trigger an arms race at a time when the Union was least able to afford it, and overwhelm what central planning could deal with.

LarryMullins 4y ago

The biography of Viktor Belenko [0], a Soviet Mig-25 pilot who defected to America by way of Japan in 1976, has a story about him being shown around the US by some government handlers and disbelieving the grocery store he was taken to, until being shown several more like it. He thought at first that the grocery store was staged, or an unusual example and not the norm. [0] Mig Pilot by John Barron

mannerheim 4y ago
Same guy found American cat food better quality than the canned food in the USSR, and fed some to his guests on a couple occasions.

Tiktaalik 4y ago

There's a similar story of years earlier Mikhail Gorbachev visiting a Canadian grocery and being surprised and impressed. https://www.tvo.org/article/in-1983-gorbachev-took-a-stroll-in-small-town-ontario-that-helped-shape-the-future-of-the-soviet https://www.tvo.org/article/in-1983-gorbachev-took-a-stroll-...

alamortsubite 4y ago
This is a much better article. It rings truer to the spirit of OP's post, whose timeline I think is too advanced to be believable; by '89 the tide had already turned.

stevespang 4y ago

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adamfeldman 4y ago

Someone wrote and produced a retelling of this story as an opera. It was hilarious. https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/shows/houston-matters/2020/02/21/361467/boris-yelstins-1989-visit-to-a-houston-grocery-store-is-now-an-opera/ https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/shows/houston-ma...

11thEarlOfMar 4y ago

It appears that the situation in Russia is much improved and Boris would likely feel the transition he initiated brought them close to parity in terms of availability and variety: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2DBFaucddw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2DBFaucddw

black_13 4y ago

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robswc 4y ago

I have some extended family from Eastern European countries. It's just so unfortunate what happened. The road to hell, paved with good intentions. They're normal people stuck picking up the pieces of a failed regime. Even with some things being adjusted, it might take weeks to comfortably afford what a typical SDE could afford in an hour here. No idea how people in the west romanticize it or say it was a good thing. I've even seen hostility directed towards Eastern Europeans living in the west (almost exclusively from radical college kids) joking about how they got what they deserved or anyone that ran from the USSR was a greedy business person and that the stories are made up.

jvnnmfjvfjvflkj 4y ago
They say this about Cubans in Miami too.
- robswc 4y ago
  Yep. Blows my mind. I feel like many people just forget the difference between real life and internet sometimes. We're talking about people that risked their lives to escape a system. Not your political opponents on twitter.

paulpauper 4y ago

No fan of the USSR but that photo is not entirely arcuate here is what it looked like https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0c/56/2d/0c562d975c99e89786ecc26cbdc8af4a.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0c/56/2d/0c562d975c99e89786ec... not much different from food stores in the US during the 40s. Maybe blandness is a worthwhile trade off it is means less obesity and other ill of modern diets.

genocidicbunny 4y ago
There were very few markets that looked like that, most of them heavily concentrated in the two biggest cities of Moscow and Leningrad. There were plenty of towns where even in the mid-to-late 90's people would have been surprised to see a market like this.
RomanPushkin 4y ago
My dad had to drive 65 miles (by public transportation only with multiple stops) to get into one of these stores. You weren't allowed to buy over certain amount of groceries unless you have permission slip ("kartochka"). Permission slip specifies the number of children you have. And even with "kartochka" it wasn't that too much food you could buy anyway. Also, as a child growing up mostly in outskirts of Moscow region (oblast), I don't remember even visiting one of these stores. I was about 20 y.o. (now 40) when I first saw a supermarket similar to this one in the town 65 miles from Moscow where I grew up. Also, it doesn't mean everything was that bad, or we haven't had enough food on the table. Most of the food was unprocessed and simple, and the most was from farmers. For example, there was no to little cheese, but there was meat, and milk, and veggies. I have to admit that a large number of meat (especially chicken) was a humanitarian assistance (notorious "nozhki Busha" - Bush's chicken legs).

richk449 4y ago

If you find this story interesting, I strongly recommend you read the new biography of Gorbachev: https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393647013 https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393647013 By the time Yeltsin visited that grocery store, Gorbachev had been working for decades to put himself into a position of power so that he could carefully shift the USSR to a liberal Democratic government with a market economy. The fact that he actually got himself into position to execute this plan is mind blowing. I don’t think I have ever read a book which so radically reshapes how I view a piece of history.

dmitriid 4y ago
Here's another thing to blow your mind: Gorbachev was the only Russian leader in history that resigned himself quietly, and then lived his life as a normal person. In all of Russian history. You could argue that Medvedev did, too, but this increasingly deranged puppet is sort of back in politics now.

aiqq 4y ago

Now russians have everything they wish and more yet behave like barbarians. Some cultures never change and they wish the same for everyone in their neighbourhood. Perhaps karma and sanctions will revert that country to the state they deserve.

Animats 4y ago

Ah, the glory days of America. Yesterday, the local market was out of eggs and bananas. There were long lines at too few staffed checkouts. There's a homeless encampment in the mall's parking area. This is in Silicon Valley.

xwdv 4y ago
The only solace I find as Americans crumble into poverty and wage slavery is that there is no real better alternative in the world today. The entire world’s glory days are behind it, every place is getting shitty. Everything is expensive and few people are thriving. The future looks joyless and barely survivable. To me the explanation for why everything got shitty all at once is obvious: the global pandemic “synchronized” all nations and produced hardship everywhere simultaneously. Fragile systems in every country were strained.
- vl 4y ago
  By any possible metric people in the world today live better than in any point in history. Sure, last two years created a minor setback, but it will be forgotten in the next few years, when there will be another "everything is good and will grow forever" period in the cycle.
  - stjohnswarts 4y ago
    Some people have bought into the captalism "always bad" trope regurgitated over and over in r/antiwork on reddit. I just tune out when I hear "wage slavery"
pjscott 4y ago
Sounds like a combination of (a) panic-buying of commodities that people heard were in short supply, similar to the Great Toilet Paper Incident, and (b) local government that doesn't do anything about homeless encampments in mall parking lots. Over in my part of America, and as far as I can tell most parts of America, things go on as usual but with higher prices for some foods.
4y ago

diimdeep 4y ago

The first part of the article I can relate to, but how it tied to the conclusion and this: “the average Russian spends about 50% of their income on food.” — is utter nonsense. Here is on the napkin calculation of grocery basket to salary from retail and service sources[0] for central region: 5600 ₽ * 100 / 62000 ₽ => 9,0323 % [0] MOEX:FIVE https://www.x5.ru/ru/PublishingImages/Pages/Media/News/Index/Index_1Q2022.pdf https://www.x5.ru/ru/PublishingImages/Pages/Media/News/Index... [1] MOEX:HHR https://stats.hh.ru/central_federal_district https://stats.hh.ru/central_federal_district And here is the 2022 state of supermarkets in Russia: [2] Typical near apartment supermarket, only of this retail chain there is, 18300 of these in country https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTy04V1bTDs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTy04V1bTDs [3] Hypermarket https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kG9yfCwG_s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kG9yfCwG_s

throwaway290 4y ago
I am from somewhat medium class but not poor background and I know very few people who earn that much, is that advertised as average monthly salary? Maybe they need to check the median? (The first link wouldn't load for me.) Edit: fwiw friend about to receive a degree in economy says 62000 is basically a bullshit number for a single person, and if they are talking families well 5600 is also (it may be enough for one person to survive without eating out but not a family). Does not compute.
- diimdeep 4y ago
  You can browse https://stats.hh.ru https://stats.hh.ru by yourself, sure salary differs by region and occupation, but it is even much higher for educated or just hard-working people, especially in tech. How is it bullshit, exactly ? (Only way I can think if you compare really low wage gov clerk with high tech worker and then average (50000 + 250000) / 2 = 150000 but it is not the case)
  - throwaway290 4y ago
    You chose the worst place to get your numbers. Try browsing avito and see if any of the 10000 rub/month flats in city center are available. The numbers are there only to attract you. But for the record none of the .ru links you gave work for me currently. Does hh even host a representative amount of jobs for cleaning staff, shop salesperson, cooks and other jobs many regular people have? How many people don't have the chance to work for good clean money and get by with gigs or grey salaries? Consider that, double monthly food expense and it may be not 50 percent but not too far. It may be hard to grasp if you happen to be in a muscovite software engineer bubble.

danielodievich 4y ago

Few years into our emigration to USA, my family brought my grandfather over to USA. He was a blue collar worker, electrician at the cement factory, entering that profession right after the war, which he spent under the occupation and mostly I think as a shepherd for cows and pigs in what is now Belarus. He has built several houses in his life and was always incredibly handy with tools. We took him to Home Depot. He looked around, stood silently for a while, and then cried. His words were "we have wasted so much our lives". Trading for nails and building materials, scrounging and scratching out a living, while the country spent all the money on weapons (currently being burned out in Ukraine, and good riddance) As my father told my then girlfriend and now wife, Soviet Union was okay for us growing up there because we didn't know any better.

pavlov 4y ago
Now the challenge for us is that we’re still stuck thinking stores full of Chinese junk is the pinnacle of civilization and we’re unable to know any better despite accumulating evidence of planetary destruction.
- jhoechtl 4y ago
  But where lies the middle ground? Soviets having one sort of butter vs. 20 sorts of butter (yoghurt, drills, ...) many of which were produced abroad? Maybe we can correct (economic) future by simply insourcing some goods and therefore work and forget about the knowledge society boloney?
  - bendbro 4y ago
    You'll be called a fascist if you develop this view.
    - gotorazor 4y ago
      communist
  - jjeaff 4y ago

cat_plus_plus 4y ago

Gorbachev's take was "let's think it through and hear all opinions and then decide what should be done about long term future of USSR". Yelsin dropped "let's think it through". Although privatisation of state enterprise by distributing vouchers to all citizens has merit on paper, one must ensure that population is educated about realistic ups and downs of stocks and is given some basic security to make long term rational decisions. Putin dropped "hear all opinions" The rest is history. West should have bailed our Russia through some equivalent of Marshall plan to avoid present day situation.

yourapostasy 4y ago
> West should have bailed our Russia through some equivalent of Marshall plan... Definitely should have. However, it would have fell into the lap of the US to give the lion’s share and I remain unpersuaded the US had at that time the economic strength to pull that off without putting itself into an existentially compromising posture. Politically I doubt the Russian Federation would have consented to the kind of terms Germany and Japan did for the Marshall Plan and GARIOA respectively. The Marshall plan was offered to and declined by the USSR, and they declined on behalf of USSR Eastern European satellites, so there were marketing hooks to revive a Marshall Plan. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out informal overtures were made for a similar plan and rebuffed by the Russian Federation; after all NATO membership was briefly and informally broached. I suspect the Cold War wore out both opponents, and for the US it was a closer call than many admit today. Much like WW2 in the first half of US involvement was a pretty close call that was only admitted much later.
- cat_plus_plus 4y ago
  US in early 90s way WAY healthier than US today, on the verge of dot com boom, and aid we would have provided would not be 100% loss like military aid to Ukraine today. What was needed is to give some kind of alternative work to employees of state enterprises, who were willing to work for very little money and had some skills. We ended up doing the same for China, only without any strategic goals and time limits. As a result, mid America now just about needs a Marshall plan itself to prevent political instability.

cfn 4y ago

Back in 1989 I, by chance, took a Russian univeristy professor that was visiting Portugal to the largest supermarket in Lisbon. As far as I rememmber, we had to buy some food to take home and cook her a meal and the supermarket was in the way. As we waited in line to pay she asked us if she could go for another walk by herself. She said that the supermarket was like a cathedral to her. That was when it dawned on me, having been in the USSR before, the shock she was going through.

contingencies 4y ago
The modern Chinese relationship to foreign retail distribution operations such as Germany's Metro, France's Carrefour, the US's Walmart and Sam's Club and even Swedish IKEA could also be framed in this light.

_5yv8 4y ago

It isn’t really useful to compare the Soviet Union in it’s final 1-2 years of total crisis to the USA. You see videos of empty supermarkets, lines and many other problems. But this certainly is not an accurate depiction of normal life during most of the Soviet period. The 70s and early 80s did not have a lot of the problems that arose in 1989.

thriftwy 4y ago
Soviet Union was rolling downhill starting from 1965, with lines and empty stalls. "Иван Васильевич меняет профессию[1]" is a 1973 movie and it depicts shortages, scarcity of consumer goods and "having to know people" to get decent service. 1. http://imdb.com/title/tt0070233 http://imdb.com/title/tt0070233
dmitriid 4y ago
> The 70s and early 80s did not have a lot of the problems that arose in 1989. In late 1980s the systemic problem became a problem everywhere. However, food stamps were already a thing in some regions in mid-1970s. And the "sausage trains" were a well-known phenomenon since at least early 70s. This was a term for the trains that people would take to buy stuff in larger cities like Moscow that didn't exist in smaller cities like Ryazan or Tver.
- thriftwy 4y ago
  To note, "smaller city" are still a half million population province capitals. It's not the smaller towns where people could live off the land for the most part.

WoodenChair 4y ago

For those of you who don't have family who escaped from Cold War era Eastern European communism, you should have the added context that this is actually a pretty commonly shared experience—and even something of a trope. My mom and grandparents upon going to a Canadian supermarket for the first time after escaping from communist Czechoslovakia in the late 1960s couldn't believe it. They were used to stores that only sold a few products and eating oranges once a year at Christmas. Of course conditions varied within different eastern bloc countries and even at a local level, but the general thrust of the theme is recurrent.

timeon 4y ago
I grew up in 80s Czechoslovakia. I do not remember empty shelves like those in the article but other then that yes. Oranges on Christmas. Fewer things in general - shops were smaller. You had to stand in line for several days if you wanted to buy a car (Škoda). You had no idea what color it would be once it was your turn. Most groceries we had was homemade especially meat and vegetables. You could buy some stuff from west but from specific shop [0]. You had to have special currency for this that could be obtained on black market. People are now used to have anything on demand. But they are also used to shitty things like tasteless tomatoes (in case of supermarkets not only during winter). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuzex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuzex

too_much_churn 4y ago

The main thrust of the comments here seems to be defending against the idea that Yeltsin was genuinely surprised. It's sad to me because this indicates that the main lessons from this very dark period of "real existing socialism" haven't been learned. Oh well, maybe next time!

eddy_chan 4y ago

I'm from Australia and I was blown away by a run of the mill H-E-B supermarket in 2022. The size, scale, selection was quadruple what I'm used to at home. A co-founder took me to when I visited him in Fort Worth and I joked that I felt like Yeltsin visiting.

cosmodisk 4y ago

Having been born under the Soviet occupation and witnessing it for a few years before the the whole thing collapsed, it was the German mail order catalogs that made most people realise how bad we had. So the soviet union collapses, there's litterly nothing to buy, huge unemployment,etc. But some start going to western Europe (especially Germany) and suddenly you go from only seeing crappy russian made stuff to Japanese VHS players, proper audio systems, clothing that looks cool and comfy. I used to scroll those catalogs for hours thinking how the hell Germans have so much stuff+ trying to convert deuchmarks to our own currency just to realise that it would take my dad's entire salary just to buy some of of those things in the catalog. The beginning of 90s was crazy: we started having these black plastic carrier bags with celebrities printed on them- it was insanely popular thing to buy! I remember we had this guy in a wheelchair in our town - someone brought him a proper baseball hat from the US, people kept talking about it for weeks how he's the only one with this hat( some jackass took the hat from the poor guy a few weeks later). We were litterly decades behind. And then wild capitalism started. By the end of 90s, the country had more or less anything you could buy in western countries. Looking back,even though I was just a little kid back then,the progress we made in three decades is insane.

FatActor 4y ago

As a U.S.-er, this is how I feel when I see Europe with their health care.

throw_away1525 4y ago

Yeltsin should have had a chat with the cashiers. How many days of vacation do they get? How many days of sick leave? How many days of maternity leave? Do they have health insurance? Can they be laid off without notice, or fired without cause? USA cashier: 0/0/0/no/yes Soviet cashier: 22/infinite/18 months/yes/no Oh, but the variety of items on the shelves!!!