7 ms·

It brings to mind the story of how when Boris Yeltsin was visiting the US, he took an impromptu detour to a random American supermarket to try to catch them off

It brings to mind the story of how when Boris Yeltsin was visiting the US, he took an impromptu detour to a random American supermarket to try to catch them off guard, only to be blown away that Americans really did have supermarkets everywhere practically overflowing with food. The story goes that the experience played a big role in shaping his vision for Russia when he went on to become its first freely elected leader a few years later. https://www.cato.org/blog/happy-yeltsin-supermarket-day https://www.cato.org/blog/happy-yeltsin-supermarket-day Or similarly there's the story of the Lykov family, who lived life cut off from humanity for 40 years but still somewhat understood what the new, moving "stars" in the night sky must be: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/for-40-years-this-russian-family-was-cut-off-from-all-human-contact-unaware-of-world-war-ii-7354256/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/for-40-years-this-rus... Edit - Plus, this quote: “What amazed him most of all,” Peskov recorded, “was a transparent cellophane package. ‘Lord, what have they thought up—it is glass, but it crumples!’”

bee_rider 2y ago
Although, Yeltsin was already a liberalizing reformer. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was playing it up a bit.
- dotnet00 2y ago
  Yeah, I do take it with a grain of salt since it's a very convenient propaganda story, and it'd be a stretch to say that he formed his political platform just 2 years before actually being elected.
  - Jensson 2y ago
    You can think something is better without believing that they are as much better as they claim to be.
    - dotnet00 2y ago
      I'd consider that to be implied. Put differently, the 'grain of salt' is that I consider the effects to be overstated, not non-existent.
- orthoxerox 2y ago
  There's still a difference between the stores having meat on their shelves and the stores having every kind of meat on their shelves. And every kind of vegetable, every kind of drink, every kind of cheese as well.
  - brabel 2y ago
    Even though the choice is impressive in any supermarket you go, unfortunately, it's very far from having every kind of drink/cheese or almost anything else you mention. Perhaps that's being pedantic, but I believe a lot of people seem to actually believe that what's in their supermarket is all there is (not talking about you specifically)... all you need to do is travel around Europe for a little while to quickly realize how much the supermarkets do not have.
    - chihuahua 2y ago
      That's probably because supermarkets tend to stock those things that sell in reasonable volume. So if you're in an area where sheep's brains (to pick a contrived example) would sit on the shelf for months, they're unlikely to stock it.
      - selimthegrim 2y ago
        I had a classmate whose father was posted to Yakutsk with Strategic Rocket Forces, and he encountered a warehouse full of cow lips (presumably shipped in from all over the Soviet Union)
        bee_rider 2y ago
        I’ll take the limited local selection we’ve got in the US, if the alternative is all-you-can-eat cow’s lips.
      - brabel 2y ago
        It's not only that. Some products are expensive and just unknown to the locals, so it wouldn't sell... others are just a nightmare to store or transport long distances. So you're very unlikely to find them in the supermarket in the USA, though it may be extremely common in Italy, or China etc. You can still probably find those rare items if you go to specialty shops... for example, I was able to find "Stracciatella di bufala" cheese in an Italian shop in Stockholm (even in Itally, I think it's hard to get that outside its native region of Puglia). Maybe I'm wrong, but I could swear you won't find that in your local grocer?
- autokad 2y ago
  > Although, Yeltsin was already a liberalizing reformer. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was playing it up a bit. I don't think so. People don't realize how bad it was in the Soviet Union. There's a story of two hockey players that came to the NHL. One went to the grocery store, he was completely taken back by how much was there, especially meat. He thought it was a mistake and didn't want to miss the opportunity so he bought it all up. He called his friend who also recently defected to the NLH, and his friend said "Same thing happened here!"
  - agumonkey 2y ago
    Also, it's easy to take basic necessities for granted. Only when you experienced hunger you realise how having plenty of affordable food is a luxury.
  - brightball 2y ago
    People used to tell stories of visiting Russia and having people try to buy their blue jeans off of them while walking down the street.
    - toss1 2y ago
      Yes, can confirm. I personally know multiple people who have had that exact experience; one just mentioned it last weekend. If they knew in advance they traveled with an extra suitcase full of jeans to sell, not so much for the money, but to make/help friends. It was also not uncommon for Soviet residents to queue up for whatever anyone was selling when it became available — Size 14 galoshes that will not even close to fit you? Get in line, buy as many as they'll sell you. You can sell/trade them later for something else. I've also been in situations with live hyperinflation, like 10% per week. The strategies people came up with to deal with that were also amazing. In the modern western societies, most people have literally zero idea of how far (or fast) things can go off the rails, or what that looks like. It is a great privilege to live in such profound blissful ignorance, and it is not appreciated.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
- Ferret7446 2y ago
  It's hard to appreciate how much we take for granted the things we are accustomed to.
QuantumGood 2y ago
Many in Yeltsin's circle believed it had been set up, and was not actually used by everyday Americans, similar to how many Soviet PR setups had been undertaken
- UncleOxidant 2y ago
  Potemkin supermarkets.
  - selimthegrim 2y ago
    The word you want is “pokazukha”
    - BrandoElFollito 2y ago
      No, GP wanted to use potemkin referring to the villages allegedly built on the Dnieper for the Russian czarina (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village)
    - filoleg 2y ago
      Both are valid. “Pokazukha” is more of a modern term (modern as in, i dont think it even hit the 80 year old mark) and is a bit more generic (refers to “showing off” or “for show” in general). “Potemkin supermarket” is a reference to “potemkin village”[0], which has been around as a term since late 18th century, and it is a bit more specific (refers to a construction that provides a false facade to a situation, with the origin of it being an actual fake village constructed to impress the empress). 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village
      - jhbadger 2y ago
        Also in English, "Potemkin X" is the standard phrase, even when referring to post-Tsarist times (and sometimes even to refer to non-Russian cases like Potemkin villages in North Korea to fool visiting Japanese of Korean descent as to quality of life in NK). I have never seen "Pokazukha" used in English at all.
schubart 2y ago
[dead]
glompers 2y ago
Good links, thanks. I had read the Houston anecdote before but never seen this photograph.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
agumonkey 2y ago
Yeltsin visit is to put in contrast with Tucker Carlson visit in Russia.. where he somehow tried to do the same in reverse (without knowing he was actually visiting a french retail chain brand but anyway). Very odd.
- dotnet00 2y ago
  Yeah that was very weird, but was also probably more convincing to his target audience of people who've never lived in even another town let alone another country.
  - galdosdi 2y ago
    Unless they've been to an Aldi, which is massively exploding in popularity everywhere in the US right now since they're a perfect fit for the current economic environment. Aldi has carts you put quarters in, and Mr Carlson tried to play up seeing the same thing in Russia like it was some kind of brilliant Russian innovation. It was truly bizarre. So weird how far that guy has fallen, much like the also once-respectable Giuliani. Back in the 2000s or 90s, he used to just be the dorky bowtie guy on an old CNN show about a rightist and a leftist having a civil and friendly debate, if I recall. Now he's... trying to hang on making a living by... shilling for Russian despots and for Snu brand sniffable tobacco (really). It's pathetic.
    - dudinax 2y ago
      He was completely pathetic twenty years ago, just respectably so.
      - galdosdi 2y ago
        Carlson or Giuliani? :-)
    - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
      And since he grew up with great wealth, and is on record about understanding that the role of these figures on Fox is propaganda, there's really no excuse: "Why Tucker Carlson Pretends to Hate Elites" https://youtube.com/watch?v=RNineSEoxjQ https://youtube.com/watch?v=RNineSEoxjQ
ijidak 2y ago
A friend of mine in college around 2002 was from Russia and had lived under communism. He told me his grandma cried the first time she entered an American grocery store. It was interesting to hear.
- tradertef 2y ago
  There is a guy from Cuba in Youtube. They record his experience in the US and he was very emotional when he visited Costco.. so much medicine, so much meat..
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
throwaway-123c 2y ago
If you think those stories charaterize USSR production/planning system, they do not. Specially the historical period when Yeltsin took power, at that time, they already had market like elements of production. If interested, there is a few books on planning, f.e. Cockshott. I think it is important since we as humans capable of conscious transformation of production relations. In some parts of production may be it is ok if it is done by independent agents, in some parts it could be better if agents could communicate not just by market, but directly, as with free softwere/GPL where you can directly work on it, not though market. What is good about USSR, is that you could likely get any schematic of any device. I do not like proprietay things so this huge market of phones and etc, is not really for me. Some ICs used do not have datasheets. The many supermarkets, it is 10 or so in radius of 1-2 km here. I'm ok if it is 7 and one lab equiped with electronics, etc equipment. There is a clear by now bound of what individual agents communicating only over market, can do.
southernplaces7 2y ago
For a wonderful scene that mirrors exactly something like Yeltsin's real trip to the supermarket, i strongly recommend the (generally wonderful) movie "Moscow on the Hudson" with Robin Williams.

bee_rider 2y ago

Although, Yeltsin was already a liberalizing reformer. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was playing it up a bit.

dotnet00 2y ago
Yeah, I do take it with a grain of salt since it's a very convenient propaganda story, and it'd be a stretch to say that he formed his political platform just 2 years before actually being elected.
- Jensson 2y ago
  You can think something is better without believing that they are as much better as they claim to be.
  - dotnet00 2y ago
    I'd consider that to be implied. Put differently, the 'grain of salt' is that I consider the effects to be overstated, not non-existent.
orthoxerox 2y ago
There's still a difference between the stores having meat on their shelves and the stores having every kind of meat on their shelves. And every kind of vegetable, every kind of drink, every kind of cheese as well.
- brabel 2y ago
  Even though the choice is impressive in any supermarket you go, unfortunately, it's very far from having every kind of drink/cheese or almost anything else you mention. Perhaps that's being pedantic, but I believe a lot of people seem to actually believe that what's in their supermarket is all there is (not talking about you specifically)... all you need to do is travel around Europe for a little while to quickly realize how much the supermarkets do not have.
  - chihuahua 2y ago
    That's probably because supermarkets tend to stock those things that sell in reasonable volume. So if you're in an area where sheep's brains (to pick a contrived example) would sit on the shelf for months, they're unlikely to stock it.
    - selimthegrim 2y ago
      I had a classmate whose father was posted to Yakutsk with Strategic Rocket Forces, and he encountered a warehouse full of cow lips (presumably shipped in from all over the Soviet Union)
      - bee_rider 2y ago
        I’ll take the limited local selection we’ve got in the US, if the alternative is all-you-can-eat cow’s lips.
    - brabel 2y ago
      It's not only that. Some products are expensive and just unknown to the locals, so it wouldn't sell... others are just a nightmare to store or transport long distances. So you're very unlikely to find them in the supermarket in the USA, though it may be extremely common in Italy, or China etc. You can still probably find those rare items if you go to specialty shops... for example, I was able to find "Stracciatella di bufala" cheese in an Italian shop in Stockholm (even in Itally, I think it's hard to get that outside its native region of Puglia). Maybe I'm wrong, but I could swear you won't find that in your local grocer?
autokad 2y ago
> Although, Yeltsin was already a liberalizing reformer. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was playing it up a bit. I don't think so. People don't realize how bad it was in the Soviet Union. There's a story of two hockey players that came to the NHL. One went to the grocery store, he was completely taken back by how much was there, especially meat. He thought it was a mistake and didn't want to miss the opportunity so he bought it all up. He called his friend who also recently defected to the NLH, and his friend said "Same thing happened here!"
- agumonkey 2y ago
  Also, it's easy to take basic necessities for granted. Only when you experienced hunger you realise how having plenty of affordable food is a luxury.
- brightball 2y ago
  People used to tell stories of visiting Russia and having people try to buy their blue jeans off of them while walking down the street.
  - toss1 2y ago
    Yes, can confirm. I personally know multiple people who have had that exact experience; one just mentioned it last weekend. If they knew in advance they traveled with an extra suitcase full of jeans to sell, not so much for the money, but to make/help friends. It was also not uncommon for Soviet residents to queue up for whatever anyone was selling when it became available — Size 14 galoshes that will not even close to fit you? Get in line, buy as many as they'll sell you. You can sell/trade them later for something else. I've also been in situations with live hyperinflation, like 10% per week. The strategies people came up with to deal with that were also amazing. In the modern western societies, most people have literally zero idea of how far (or fast) things can go off the rails, or what that looks like. It is a great privilege to live in such profound blissful ignorance, and it is not appreciated.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
Ferret7446 2y ago
It's hard to appreciate how much we take for granted the things we are accustomed to.

QuantumGood 2y ago

Many in Yeltsin's circle believed it had been set up, and was not actually used by everyday Americans, similar to how many Soviet PR setups had been undertaken

UncleOxidant 2y ago
Potemkin supermarkets.
- selimthegrim 2y ago
  The word you want is “pokazukha”
  - BrandoElFollito 2y ago
    No, GP wanted to use potemkin referring to the villages allegedly built on the Dnieper for the Russian czarina (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village)
  - filoleg 2y ago
    Both are valid. “Pokazukha” is more of a modern term (modern as in, i dont think it even hit the 80 year old mark) and is a bit more generic (refers to “showing off” or “for show” in general). “Potemkin supermarket” is a reference to “potemkin village”[0], which has been around as a term since late 18th century, and it is a bit more specific (refers to a construction that provides a false facade to a situation, with the origin of it being an actual fake village constructed to impress the empress). 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village
    - jhbadger 2y ago
      Also in English, "Potemkin X" is the standard phrase, even when referring to post-Tsarist times (and sometimes even to refer to non-Russian cases like Potemkin villages in North Korea to fool visiting Japanese of Korean descent as to quality of life in NK). I have never seen "Pokazukha" used in English at all.

schubart 2y ago

[dead]

glompers 2y ago

Good links, thanks. I had read the Houston anecdote before but never seen this photograph.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

agumonkey 2y ago

Yeltsin visit is to put in contrast with Tucker Carlson visit in Russia.. where he somehow tried to do the same in reverse (without knowing he was actually visiting a french retail chain brand but anyway). Very odd.

dotnet00 2y ago
Yeah that was very weird, but was also probably more convincing to his target audience of people who've never lived in even another town let alone another country.
- galdosdi 2y ago
  Unless they've been to an Aldi, which is massively exploding in popularity everywhere in the US right now since they're a perfect fit for the current economic environment. Aldi has carts you put quarters in, and Mr Carlson tried to play up seeing the same thing in Russia like it was some kind of brilliant Russian innovation. It was truly bizarre. So weird how far that guy has fallen, much like the also once-respectable Giuliani. Back in the 2000s or 90s, he used to just be the dorky bowtie guy on an old CNN show about a rightist and a leftist having a civil and friendly debate, if I recall. Now he's... trying to hang on making a living by... shilling for Russian despots and for Snu brand sniffable tobacco (really). It's pathetic.
  - dudinax 2y ago
    He was completely pathetic twenty years ago, just respectably so.
    - galdosdi 2y ago
      Carlson or Giuliani? :-)
  - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
    And since he grew up with great wealth, and is on record about understanding that the role of these figures on Fox is propaganda, there's really no excuse: "Why Tucker Carlson Pretends to Hate Elites" https://youtube.com/watch?v=RNineSEoxjQ https://youtube.com/watch?v=RNineSEoxjQ

ijidak 2y ago

A friend of mine in college around 2002 was from Russia and had lived under communism. He told me his grandma cried the first time she entered an American grocery store. It was interesting to hear.

tradertef 2y ago
There is a guy from Cuba in Youtube. They record his experience in the US and he was very emotional when he visited Costco.. so much medicine, so much meat..

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

throwaway-123c 2y ago

If you think those stories charaterize USSR production/planning system, they do not. Specially the historical period when Yeltsin took power, at that time, they already had market like elements of production. If interested, there is a few books on planning, f.e. Cockshott. I think it is important since we as humans capable of conscious transformation of production relations. In some parts of production may be it is ok if it is done by independent agents, in some parts it could be better if agents could communicate not just by market, but directly, as with free softwere/GPL where you can directly work on it, not though market. What is good about USSR, is that you could likely get any schematic of any device. I do not like proprietay things so this huge market of phones and etc, is not really for me. Some ICs used do not have datasheets. The many supermarkets, it is 10 or so in radius of 1-2 km here. I'm ok if it is 7 and one lab equiped with electronics, etc equipment. There is a clear by now bound of what individual agents communicating only over market, can do.

southernplaces7 2y ago

For a wonderful scene that mirrors exactly something like Yeltsin's real trip to the supermarket, i strongly recommend the (generally wonderful) movie "Moscow on the Hudson" with Robin Williams.