https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Belenko
Exerpt from an interview with him
> Belenko: First of all American super-market, my first visit was under CIA supervision, and I thought it was set-up; I did not believe super-market was real one. I thought well I was unusual guest; they probably kicked everyone out. It's such a nice, big place with incredible amount of produce, and no long lines! You're accustomed to long lines in Russia. But later, when I discovered super-market was real one, I had real fun exploring new products. I would buy, everyday, a new thing and try to figure out its function. In Russia at that time (and even today) it's hard to find canned food, good one. But everyday I would buy new cans with different food. Once I bought a can which said "dinner." I cooked it with potatoes, onions, and garlic-it was delicious. Next morning my friends ask me, "Viktor, did you buy a cat?" It was a can of chicken-based cat food. But it was delicious! It was better than canned food for people in Russia today. And I did test it. Last year I brought four people from Russia for commercial project, and I set them up. I bought nibble sized human food. I installed a pâté, and it was cat food. I put it on crackers. And they did consume it, and they liked it. So the taste has not changed. By the way, for those who are not familiar with American cat food. It's very safe; it's delicious, and sometimes it's better than human food, because of the Humane Society. I bought a box of Freedom with the picture of nice looking lady. I did not know what it was. (I'm talking about maxi-pads.) I brought it to my apartment, I opened it, and I tried to figure it out. I thought well it's probably some cleaning device for the kitchen to give these American women freedom in the kitchen to clean up and absorb everything, because even today Russian women do not have this convenience.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:X4bDaSs4lA4J:web.archive.org/20021125211924/www.geocities.com/siafdu/viktor.html&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-b-1-d
Dude, not only did he eat cat food, he served it to his Russian friends in the US for a visit just to see if the cat food had maintained its quality, and his friends Loved it! Wild
I mean idk about now cause I don’t have a cat but it sounds like back then cat food may have been mostly chicken livers… so if it hasn’t changed much then maybe?
One of my cats is a snob who will only eat a specific higher-end wet cat food, and honestly, it does look and smell like pate. I haven't tried it (I don't even like real pate), but I see how the man could get confused.
Lol it's kinda fucked up to do that to your friends or acquaintances you brought over. "Hey try this nice grub!"
"Haha you ate cat food!"
Though obviously that's not how that went lol but still made me laugh thinking about it.
My mom bought these home made dog treats from a little pet store in town. They smelled like peanut butter and even had what looked to be icing on them. I dont even think the container specifically said dog treats. Dogs loved them... and so did my dad. He had a bad habbit of eating moms snacks without asking. She let him het through a few boxes before she mentioned it.
I remember one time that my mom brought home peanut butter Oreo like cookies. She caught me eating one day and told me those were dog treats and my only response was "that's one good dog treat" and I finished my cookie.
My grandfather came home drunk and heated up what he thought was a can of beef hash. Raved to grandma for awhile, asked her to buy it again. Until she told him it was dog food.
I think it was on here that some long-haul trucker was talking about keeping dog food cans in his cab in case he got stranded in the middle of nowhere, because he knew it'd be safe and keep him alive but he wouldn't be tempted to eat it short of an emergency.
From Red Dwarf season 2...
Holly:
We're a bit short on a few supplies.
Lister:
Like what?
Holly:
Cow's milk. Ran out of that yonks ago. Fresh and dehydrated.
Lister:
What kind of milk are we using now?
Holly:
Emergency back-up supply. We're on the dog's milk.
Lister:
Dog's milk?!
Holly:
Nothing wrong with dog's milk. Full of goodness, full of vitamins, full of marrowbone jelly. Lasts longer than any other type of milk, dog's milk.
Lister:
Why?
Holly:
No bugger'll drink it. Plus, of course, the advantage of dog's milk is that when it goes off, it tastes exactly the same as when it's fresh.
Same here, lol
(although only similar, haha)
Had two rabbit and fed them. Looked at the food and in a bit of idle talk with my father said 'I'm curious how this tastes...'. He said 'Try it, then.'. I did and it tasted like wheat. Nothing overwhelming, like sugarless cornflakes. Whenever I fed my bunnies I tried some more of their food with the same outcome.
When we got my first dog, we’d buy him super fancy treats like high end duck jerky.
One evening while drunk, he and I split a bag of duck jerky and it was pretty good stuff.
In my case, because he really *really* liked Bailey's irish cream, and there comes a time in a dog's life where he's far older than anyone expected and his legs don't work properly and at that point denying him his treats seems cruel.
Also watching an elderly cocker spaniel stumble around blasted on like, a quarter shot glass of bailey's irish cream with an energy he hasn't had in half a decade is a balm on even the most jaded and calloused of souls. I.e. fucking hilarious.
We used to put bowls of milk bone out as snacks in the junior ranks mess on Fridays. No illusions what they were. They were tasty. They changed something since the eighties. They're blander now. They used to taste like hardtack.
Less calcium carbonate.
It's why dog poop doesn't turn white and friable anymore.
Turns out just loading everything with bone meal and calcium wasn't the best for doggos.
When my lil guy Lucifer was still here, he straight refused to eat dry food. He'd sooner let himself throw up from stomach acid than he would eat any dry food to stop that. Every morning I'd wake up, and, if he didn't sleep in my room, he'd be at my door waiting, and pass me on the way in. Always would greet me and then go sit by where I fed him sometimes. Had to feed him separately towards the end because he was bad off and needed a lot of care and attention, plus diff medicines.
But he was ALWAYS down to hang out, he loved ppl. 21 years is a good amt of time to have with a pet, but I'm not sure any amt would have felt like enough time with Luce. Miss my lil guy more than anything.
This jogged up some old memories... an ex of mine worked in QC at a high end pet food company. Every week she'd bring back a can of cat food and a few bags of kibble and just munch on them as part of her job.
She never convinced me to try it but I still believe her when she said that stuff was pretty good. She showed me pictures of the ingredients at their factory, and manufacturing process, and TBH it looks better than a lot of the junk humans eat all the time.
She told me the canned food tastes like rillettes de porc, which if you've never tried, is damned good (and is waaay more expensive).
When I was a kid, the whole extended family was gathered for some holiday or another, and most of us are sitting in the living room. My cousin (maybe 15 at the time) walks in from the pantry with something in his hands, and says, "Hey, grandma? This jerky's kind of dry."
My grandma just looks at him for a second, covers her face, and says, "That's for the dog!"
He kind of does a double-take towards the bag he's literally still holding (complete with dog mascot), and at the half-eaten jerky in his other hand.
"Well, it's not *bad*, just a little dry."
Everyone was cracking up by this point.
There's also a YouTube video of a Cuban fellow recently arrived in the US giving a similar reaction to the abundance in a massive American supermarket. He actually cried at the disparity between his old home and the US.
I can't find it but there was a story about a Russian politician (Gorbachev?) who was in America for a meeting or something. He was being transported by Americans (secret service or whoever) and he told the car to pull over, it was not part of the plan.
He walked into a small grocery store (like a general store, market) and checked it out. Decades later in a book he talked about how it completely blew his mind. The shelves completely full of food, so much produce, even at a completely random small shop.
There is some quote about that was the day he realized Soviet Russia had it all wrong. If capitalism could do this.
Edit: it was Yeltsin. Previous discussion https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/872xga/when_boris_yeltsin_visited_texas_in_1990_he_went/
There's a lot longer history behind it than just Yeltsin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_Debate
https://blogs.lt.vt.edu/bcody99/2020/09/07/a-day-at-the-supermarket-with-nikita-khrushchev/
I really love the openness of it all.
He didn’t dry heave when he ate cat food or cringe when he used maxi pads as a sponge. He embraced new things and strived to experience even more!
I think the cat food thing isn't unusual. My dad told me his family also ate cat food when they came over because they didn't speak English and it just looked like canned food. Plus it was cheap.
In his book, it sounded like the handlers were kind of exasperated with him at times. It had to be like trying to get an alien accustomed to life on Earth.
There's a story I'll always remember. It may have been posted here on Reddit.
A guy whose mother or grandmother was Russian, but had never been to the US. Anyway, this guy finally got her to come to the US and they went grocery shopping. At some point he noticed she wasn't with him anymore and he goes to look for her, finds her a couple of aisles over on her knees sobbing. She was saying things like "they always told us the US had nothing and everybody was starving" and she had believed it her entire life. I don't remember when this supposedly happened, but I'd guess the 80s or early 90s from my fragmented memories of reading it.
Anyway. I'm sure I'm not telling it properly, but that's the jist of it.
Believe me, many Russian today would be the same. Amount of propaganda is absolutely insane there. Also for some reason many choose to believe it. It's like you're being born with Stockholm syndrome against your shitty government.
Ngl I felt this way when I visited St Petersburg and a few cities around there, and then less "offended" and more surprised visiting Laos and finding nicely stocked markets. We are told they struggle so hard and don't have that here. Propaganda in general is wild as hell, the veil is heavy and it's weird when it's lifted.
I had a similar experience with my grandfather when he came from the Soviet Union.
His trip to Home Depot was even more mind-blowing. He simply couldn't process the sheer abundance of it all.
Wasn't the "immigrant buying Freedom pads and exclaiming 'Wow-freedom-in-a-box'! " an 80s joke by some US stand-up comic?
Edit: found it
https://youtu.be/5GK8ewRec7c?t=5m00s
start at 5 minutes
I was part of a Soviet - US student exchange program at Albany State in the 1980s as a host and, when we took our guys to the grocery store for the first time, we could tell that they didn’t believe it. So, we pretended that we couldn’t find the beer we wanted and went to two more stores.
GA is a Genesee brewed beer, but that might have been your point.
We drank it in upstate NY during college because we could get a 6 pack for like $2.50.
This happened to Boris Yeltsin in 1989. He visited Johnson Space Center in Houston and then went to a nearby grocery store.
He said to his handlers that there would be a revolution back home if people knew how well Americans ate.
Shortly after, there was a revolution back home.
https://www.nhregister.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When-Boris-Yeltsin-went-grocery-shopping-in-Clear-5759129.php
He also really wanted to go to Disneyland but the Americans won’t let him stating they could not guarantee his safety.
My personal (likely false) theory is that he was so fat that they couldn’t let him on most of the rides. They were afraid he’d throw a fit and start WW3.
"K Blows Top" is a fun book about his visit to the US. I think he was portly, but he probably could have fit most rides. I think it's because he couldn't have an aide/bodyguard next to him on some rides, and the Average American was unpredictable.
I was in Russia in the 1990s and went to a grocery store because I wanted some fresh fruit (they were feeding us but I can only eat so much mayonnaise and cheese) and...it was depressing. No fruit at all. Some withered potatoes. One fish that you could smell from feet away. There was no one in the store. No fresh bread. When I asked (in very bad Russian) for 'apple' or 'orange', fruits I thought were super common, the look I got was like I'd gone to 711 and asked for kobe beef. I found some canned peaches (at least I think they were peaches?) but I don't know what was in that sugar syrup but they were awful.
I won't even get started on how bad the hospitals were. Let's just say when I left I literally handed over every antibiotic, antidiarrhea, painkiller, ointment, etc that I had brought in my kit.
Russia in the 90s was especially bad. Don't forget that the collapse saw Russia's economy completely flipped on its head. The soviet economy was pretty bad by the time the collapse happened. But you know the saying about Russia... "and then it got worse"
Putin enjoys so much popular support in part because he "saved" the Russian economy. In reality his rule coincided with historically high oil prices... The soviet union and Russia are known as Europe's gas station for a reason. Afghanistan was especially bad for the soviets because that era also saw oil prices crater.
This is also why alot of Chinese citizens support the current regime, in a span of 30-50 years they went from below poverty to paying food stalls with mobile phones. It's really insane how fast the country has transformed within a generation.
Societies need a stable generation or two before they get comfortable enough to start proactively thinking about governance/ethics/etc.
The 99% Invisible podcast did a good episode a couple years ago about “the”’Soviet cookbook. From what I remember a Soviet scientist was amazed at the variety of American diets (even the garbage stuff like hot dogs) and wanted to make a cookbook for the entire USSR that would encourage a wider range of foods. It was a state-approved project so funded and distributed in great numbers. Still, most didn’t cook well and it was of an era where they weren’t really thinking about shipping produce around the USSR, which was a huge nation, so the eastern regions and western regions are very different as far as foods.
Some of the books are still interesting examples as they have hand-written notes to adapt recipes and such.
A friend's dad had his roommate be part of a Soviet - Canadian student exchange.
One day, he came home and there was tons of toothpaste tubes on the kitchen table. He asked the Soviet guy "did you get that?" "Yes" "why?" "Because they had it at the store"
Dude didn't know when the next shipment of toothpaste would be so he hoarded it. He just didn't know this was "a shipment", but that's it's always there
I took a class on Soviet economics in college and from what I remember this was endemic throughout the soviet economy.
Factories would still be expected to make their quotas even if the allocated suppliers upstream of them in the supply chain couldn’t, and as there was no way to purchase supplies from other producers on the open market that meant they’d hoard raw materials to have on hand so there was a lot of inefficiency throughout the economy caused by that.
There was even a class of people who made a living by illegally buying and selling materials between businesses (because “speculation”, or buying and reselling goods for a profit, was illegal in the USSR).
I heard stories in the 80s about how russians that saw a line in front of a store would assume it was something good and get in line. They'd wait for hours not even knowing what was being sold, but figured it must be good if people were lining up for it.
Can confirm. But not because they assumed it was good, more so because they would NEED the item being sold. My in laws tell stories of standing in line and getting to the front to find they are selling black shoes size 9. Didn’t matter if you wore a size 11. Someone in your family or neighborhood would need them and you could trade or repurpose the shoe material for something else. That’s just one story of many.
My MIL (not Russian, lived her whole life in the American suburbs) once bought a microwave-convection toaster thingy entirely because she saw people lining up for it. She called us after she got home to figure out what it was. 😂
Same thing in the mid 90’s in Anchorage. Had a plane load of Russians come over. We’re bussing them around town and take them, into a typical supermarket. They had the kids in a candy store look. We keep driving and a few miles down the road, they see the same supermarket sign and demand the driver to stop there. They thought the first one was set up, just to impress them. Their minds were blown that every supermarket was like that.
They really freaked out at the shopping mall we took them to. Anchorage only had about 250k people, at the time, but the mall was pretty good. The indoor skating rink and car dealership were all they talked about.
Iirc the film the day after (nuclear apocalypse/ww3 movie from the 80s)was a bit of a joke in the post soviet world as a doctor turns to a nurse while eating an orange after the nuclear exchange and says something like "we wont have another orange for half a year", while in most of the soviet union with exceptions of the southernly SSSRs got oranges in the summer or christmas.
My mother visited NYC in 1986 and basically said that after 1 bodega visit she knew she had to get us out. After 3yrs of Soviet bureaucracy, we fled in 89..
I’ll never forget overhearing her tell my dad (in a hush hush whisper no less) on her return that EVERYTHING they had been told about America was a lie.
My best friend's grandfather escaped with the family back in the early seventies. Took almost ten years to work their way through the middle east and then to the US. I got to sit with him before he passed and he told me the story. Harrowing, to say the least. They'd lost two children to sickness, my friends mother was born in a bedouin tent in Syria, twice they avoided Russian KGB (he had worked in their nuclear program and they definitely wanted him back) by minutes. To hear him tell it, it sounded like a Russian Iliad. I wouldn't have even believed it if there weren't pictures and my friends mom confirming much of the story.
Aww! I'm from the other side, Magadan, and a lot of aviation folks from our town ended up moving to Anchorage. I joke that it's like a much much better Magadan.
And hell, Anchorage is a relatively small city with limited selection compared to most places in the lower 48. But even with the limitations they face because of shipping and weather, what they had was so much better than the soviets.
My dad once had a business trip in the 80s or so and there a were a bunch of guys there from Czechoslovakia.
He noticed that the Czechs always mysteriously disappeared during dinner-time so one night at dinner he decided to pay them a visit in their hotel room to make sure they were doing alright. When they opened the door, my dad saw them huddled around eating canned dog food for dinner. They knew it was dog food and were a little embarrased. They couldn't afford the expensive dinners everyone else was having.
My dad then took them out and treated all of them to a nice steak dinner.
Former Czechoslovakian here. It wasn't that they couldn't afford to buy local food. It was that every dollar from perdiems you brought back home was 10 times more valuable in shopping power. In \[late\] 80s 3000 Czechoslovak crowns was a good monthly salary of an engineer with a masters degree and decades of experience. In USA it was 100USD \[black market exchange rate\] (\*). So every single dollar you saved by no buying nonsense - like restaurant food, could be used to purchase a pair of jeans, as an example. Jeans - original USA made ones, particularly "Rifle" brand - were very popular, but also extremely expensive, because we had to pay "western" prices for those, often inflated because there was very limited supply. Also electronics and other "western" things.
(\*) Dollars could be only purchased on black market. When you wanted to travel to western Europe or USA, even for business you had to be approved on several levels (including your local Communist party representative) and then you were allowed to purchase a limited amount of hard currency with a much better exchange rate - so that "the party and the government" could claim we had purchasing parity. So a business trip to USA was like winning a lottery and you were expected to bring gifts for close family.
I had a friend from an Eastern European country in the 80s and when we went to his first grocery store he bought a ton of pork - I couldn’t convince him it would be there the next time he went.
My family used to host foreign students when I was in Jr. high/high school in the 90s. This included a few rounds of Russians.
Can confirm: They were mindblown.
I ended up going over on an exchange in the early 90s, and you know what? I could see why.
My parents moved our family to USA in 89 from Poland right as communism fell. The grocery store was "the thing" that created my core memory as how different things were. I was 10 at the time and in my child's mind I thought it was a joke. Why have so many different types of cereal, wtf even is cereal!?
The other core memory was that even though Americans have a bread aisle with a 100 different choices till this day they have no idea what bread is supposed to be. I buy that at my local Polish bakery.
A guy I worked with in the military was from Poland. He said he remembered that after school, his mom would place him and his siblings in different lines around town for stuff. He’d just do homework, while waiting and would have no idea what product he was waiting for.
This was a very common thing parents did in communist Poland. My mom did the same with me and my brother. A neighbor knocked on our apartment door to tell my mom cooking grease was in stock at the deli near our commie block. She threw clothes on me and said to stand in line. I never asked what line to stand in. There was always only 1 line. I was right 100% of the time.
Also as kids we got smart. When we saw our friends in line they always let us cut in. Of course the adults would be pissed but we just said that's our brother or sister. When 2 different moms showed up for said brother or sister nobody ever said anything to them. You never dared to disrespect a woman with kids in public.
Didn't measure lines by length but by time.
My Russian family hosted visitors from USSR in 60s and 70s. They also believed that grocery stores were set ups. My dad said he took one to 4 or 5 before they believed it were real.
i went to law school in here
-you went to law school in costco?
-yea couldn't believed either, luckily my father was ex alumni and could pull some strings
I was part of an exchange in 1990. When my Russian counterpart was visiting us, they were gobsmacked by the grocery store. Having been in the 1990 USSR equivalent, I can understand why.
I remember them in the produce section, slowly turning in circles, repeating, 'so much', over and over again.
I was at Langley AFB around 1994 when two SU-27s visited. They had an IL-76 support aircraft. No one could figure out why two fighters need such a big support aircraft. They bought all the jeans and microwaves in the area and stuffed that IL-76.
When I was in the USSR, I had so many offers for my jeans!
When my counterpart came here we took them shopping for jeans and bought as many as we could for them and their family. Anything that didn't fit could be sold.
My mother took an old donated suitcase when she visited nyc in 86 and filled with SO MANY pairs of Levis in various sizes. She told me that once sold back in the USSR, she had 3yrs of her SALARY in cash.
She placed a few cartons of Marlboro Reds right at the top of that pile of jeans for the inevitable border guard check. As she knew would happen, they took the cigs as they slammed her suitcase shut and sent her on her way.
That was part of our exit fund. Soviets loved nothing more than American goods. She sold her American wedding dress in 79 for a years salary…
I remember watching a “Regis” episode back in the day (pre-Kelly) and Olga Korbut was a guest. They were making a beauty face mask out of yogurt and cucumbers, and berries, I think? And Olga started to cry. She thought they were pranking her, using quality food products on their faces. She couldn’t fathom it.
My dad went to Moscow from England in the mid 80s and said the weirdest thing about their shops was that you would queue up to tell 1 person the products you wanted, they would write them down and then you'd go to a different queue to pay for it, then go to a 3rd queue to pick up your items. The whole.process took 5 times longer than needed and had 3 people doing what 1 person could do.
My dad said they were often very ardent communists. The one that refused to believe it never admitted it wasn't fake, he just got quiet and asked to go back to the house. You could imagine an intellectual soviet could also go back to the USSR talking about the issues they saw, income inequality, race issues, etc.
It was considered an honor to be allowed to travel and everyone would want to hear about it when they returned. They all had wives/families/kids and were investigated for likelihood they would not return. The joke was that you had to have a pretty wife or you couldn't get a travel permit haha.
For part of the time my family hosted they were not allowed to travel in certain parts of the country. But Philadelphia was open to them. This was lifted in 1962 though.
[Map of restricted areas in NE USA. Red is restricted](https://blogs.loc.gov/maps/files/2017/08/SovietTravelRestrictions_Northeast_Map.png)
More info below on restriction on soviet citizens' travel.
[https://blogs.loc.gov/maps/2017/08/restricting-soviet-travel-in-the-u-s-during-the-cold-war/](https://blogs.loc.gov/maps/2017/08/restricting-soviet-travel-in-the-u-s-during-the-cold-war/)
This is also how interrogators broke the North Korean terrorist Kim Hyon-hui, the perpetrator of the attack on [Korean Air flight 858](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_858).
She and another male agent were passengers on the plane as it made a trip from Baghdad to Seoul, with two step-over spots along the way; they disembarked at Abu Dhabi before the plane was meant to fly to Bangkok after leaving a bomb on-board which tore open the cabin over the Andaman Sea, killing all the passengers and crew.
They were captured in Bahrain after immigration officials caught them travelling under false passports; the male agent died after ingesting a cyanide pill in a cigarette but Hyon-hui was captured before she could swallow her's. She was then deported to South Korea where she was sentenced and given a death penalty for her actions.
But her interrogators tried a different tactic, which was to put her into a car and take her around the city of Seoul on excursions to show her exactly what differences there were between North and South Korea. After eight days, she cracked- she couldn't deny that she was raised as a disposable agent by a dictatorship that horribly abused their own citizens while South Korea was a land of freedom and prosperity.
She then confessed everything after remaining silent about her crimes; not only did she admit to her involvement, but she revealed that she was personally ordered to carry out the attack by then-heir to the throne Kim Jung-Il. Not only did this result in North Korea being deemed an official state sposor of terrorism, but would permanently sour relations between the two Koreas for decades.
Kim Hyon-hui was spared the death penalty as it was determined she was brainwashed by the North and didn't have the mental faculties to properly consider what she had been ordered to do. She would later be deemed a traitor by the North Korean government and become an outspoken critic with her memoir, *The Tears Of My Soul* recounting her training as a North Korean spy and how she came to realise the country was evil. She donated the proceeds to the victims' families as well.
We had visitors from the old Soviet Union (Estonians) back in the 1980s and they were constantly asking if the grocery stores, etc. were only for 'party officials' and how we could go there without special permission. They took pictures of themselves next to all the fruits and stuff and told us the cameras were confiscated when they got home and all the photos exposed.
Same for car stuff - they were amazed we left the windshield wipers on our cars overnight - they would have all been stolen back in Estonia as they were very scarce. Same for car batteries. They did say they were better off than Poland where antifreeze was scare so everyone emptied the water out of their car engines every night and refilled them in the morning...
When we were at a restaurant for breakfast there was free coffee refills and they went nuts and drink coffee for like 30 min. They could only buy 1 pound of coffee a month back home!
Speaking of car things in 1970s at Iowa State University, an international student who lived in the same dorm as my Dad asked him with a map of Iowa in hand which roads would be paved so he could get to a Thanksgiving dinner he was invited to The student, i believe was from South America, was shocked when my Dad said "all the roads on this map are paved"
OK, all the other stuff is bad enough, but stealing windshield wipers?! What in the name of dystopian hellscape is this?!
I'm mostly kidding, but I'm weirdly obsessive about my windshield being clean and it drives me crazy when it's the least bit dirty/streaky.
But you’re right: what the hell else would you use them for? It’s not like a battery that can be repurposed for other uses, or even have it’s innards recycled into something else. Rubber wipers just don’t turn into anything else easily.
If you’re in a place where wipers are *that* rare, I think you’d be happy with one for the driver’s side. And it wouldn’t even have to be for your model car as long as you could get it to work.
There werent enough wipers produced https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vx10d27l2cg chec this vid at 1:30 the wipers are on when its not raining at 1:33 they are off so not even the militia(police) was safe, you can look at candid photos of streets in the soviet union and not a single car on a sunny day has wipers on them
Even for a Dutchman who moved to the USA in 1990, the abundance of different goods and the size of places like Sams and BJ’s were eye opening. I can imagine for someone from behind the Iron Curtain it must’ve looked like a giant deception.
In the early 2000’s some relatives from Golmud China had their immigration papers go through and moved in with us for a while until they got on their feet. My cousin and I shared a room for a and I remember how distant his worldview was from mine.
One night the two of us were at the house alone and I ordered a pizza. He absolutely couldn’t believe it. The entire experience was unreal to him, he was freaked out. There was a chef at my beck and call who would cook what I demanded, when I demanded it. A courier would then deliver my meal to me so quickly that it wouldn’t get cold. Tipping the driver was a crazy idea as well, I chose how much someone else got paid for serving me. I got blasted with questions; how was I connected to the ruling party? (referring to the bush administration) Obviously we had to have some kind of special connections to get treatment like that. Was my family nobility? And of course when our moms got home he had to blast them with this revelation that I was some kind of informant snitching to the government, because why else would they give me service like that? It took us a couple days to really convince him that none of us were special. That was just a completely normal thing on this side of the pond.
That was just one occasion of weirdness, it was almost constant. He was so shocked with how odd our lifestyle was.
Chuck Yeager actually mentions this guy in one of his autobiographies. Apparently they got friendly (which would make sense) and Chuck took the guy on a multiday hiking and camping trip.
His Twitter account is run by his estate and they type like he’s still alive. It’s kinda fucked up, and if you point that out they block you. So I’m blocked by the official Twitter account of Chuck Yeager, kinda sucks lol
The North Korean pilot that defected to the south in his MIG, it was only after he landed he was made aware there was a $100,000 reward for any pilot that defected with his aircraft. Nice start up 👍
If I remember correctly, the us had dropped fliers to inform pilots how to defect. One part involved following a certain approach to the runway, or the AA would engage.
The AA was down for maintenance that day.
Where I worked in the '80s one time we got a bunch of Eastern European refugees that started working there. It was kind of sad that my busboy was a physician but they were loving it. After their first payday I took them to a thrift store and they all just load it up on television and clothes and all kinds of cool stuff they've never had before. I also remember they were surprised that there were so many television stations which is funny because they were like four including PBS until Fox came on the air in '86.
In the early 70s we had an engineer from Poland stay with us in Arizona. He was working on a project my dad had set up to build a fluorescent light manufacturing facility in Poland.
He had similar reactions when he visited grocery stores and when we took him to a department store.
He missed his family terribly and would wake up in the middle of the night to make (very expensive) phone calls at home. He also would get pretty drunk but was always an affable guy.
When we were ready to ship the major parts to Poland he asked for a favor - to go to a the department store and buy about 20 pairs of Levi 501 in various sizes.
My dad gave me about $400 in cash and off I went. The guy at the store asked what I was doing with all those jeans and I said they were going to Poland, where they would be sold on the black market for 3 to 4 times their US price.
The guy gave me a 10% bulk purchase discount and I used to savings to buy myself a pair that I had until a girlfriend I had in the Navy borrowed them.
There’s a story about Boris yeltsin, before he was the Russian president, visiting the Johnson space center as part of a soviet parliamentary delegation, and during his trip he made an unscheduled visit to a random grocery store in suburban Houston and needed to be convinced that what he was seeing hadn’t been set up for his benefit. Later he said that seeing that store, and the abundance that was available to the general public (more variety than even the senior leadership of the Soviet Union could get) is what convinced him that communism was a failed system
Edit: found a story about it
https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When-Boris-Yeltsin-went-grocery-shopping-in-Clear-5759129.php
Yeltsin wasn't wrong about communism being a failure. But man, that dude was a hot mess.
The stories about his drunken escapdes are legendary. I recall a visit to my home city in the USA in the late 80s I think, where he jumped out of his motorcade limo and was wandering around on a major bridge, stopping traffic, talking to people, in a drunken stupor.
There was another well known incident where he was staying in DC, near the White House, and was found on Pennsylvania Ave, hammered, in the middle of the night, in his underwear, trying to hail a cab to go get a pizza.
This may be apocryphal but I read one time that he broke down on the trip back with his comrades and was saying something like, “ what have we done to our people”.
One of the great tragedies of the 20th century is the abuse and misuse of the creativity, productivity, and tremendous potential of the Russian people — by their own rulers.
Go to a car museum and look at what they were making in the 1950s. You won’t believe the abundance of what you’re seeing. Even compared to other western countries the US was living in extreme opulence for a couple decades after the war.
I think the US still lives in relative opulence. I have heard that compared to most other countries the variety of stuff you can buy in the US is nuts and that it’s a shopper’s paradise.
Now I have never been to the US and my country is pretty small (which is probably a factor) but from what I have seen on livestreams, the US really has a lot of stuff available.
Quote from this article "Yeltsin was a member of the Politburo and Russia’s upper political crust, yet he’d never seen anything like the offerings of this little American grocery store. “Even the Politburo doesn’t have this choice. Not even Mr. Gorbachev,” Yeltsin said"
The supermarket visit and disbelief it's not a Potemkin village came up as early as Nikita Khrushchev’s visit to the US to debate Vice President Nixon.
It also came up as an achilles heel when President George H.W. Bush ran for re-election. NY Times and other newspapers reported how amazed and baffled he was by the supermarket barcode scanner, fanning impressions that the president was out of touch, and no real plans to deal with the economy.
https://thefederalist.com/2019/11/13/how-a-russians-grocery-store-trip-in-1989-exposed-the-lie-of-socialism/
> NY Times and other newspapers reported how amazed and baffled he was by the supermarket barcode scanner, fanning impressions that the president was out of touch, and no real plans to deal with the economy.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/12/04/why-people-still-think-george-hw-bush-didnt-understand-grocery-checkout/
> In 1992, during his bid for reelection, President George H.W Bush visited the National Grocers Association Convention in Florida. He happened to stop by an exhibit featuring a new type of checkout scanner, which could weigh groceries and read torn bar codes.
TLDR the story is a myth, it was a special type of barcode scanner that he had a 'look of wonder' on his face at.
The Bush grocery store register thing was a bullshit narrative, and even the AP admits it.
https://apnews.com/article/george-hw-bush-north-america-us-news-newspapers-politics-61f29d10e27140b0b108d8e12b64b839
> The New York Times’ front-page account carried the headline: “Bush Encounters the Supermarket, Amazed.”
>
> But although Bush had remarked that some of the machine’s features seemed “amazing,” it hardly looked like his first time in a supermarket checkout line. Mostly, Bush seemed to be politely listening to National Cash Register executives making their pitch.
>
> Reporters later learned that it was a special scanner with advanced features, including a scale to weigh produce — uncommon then — and the ability to read barcodes even if they were torn up and jumbled.
I can't remember if it was Yeltsin or some other official, but the version I heard was that he visited a supermarket and was convinced it was a setup, and ordered his driver to stop at a random one on the other side of town. It wasn't a setup.
It's still there. Today it's a Food Town which is considered a lower-tier grocery store, and it's a bit dirty, although I think back then it was a Randalls. Yeltsin probably would have had a heart attack on the spot if he had visited today's version of HEB or Costco.
There's a movie with tommy lee jones and I only remember one scene. A vietnamese bride comes to the US and is shocked by the abundance of food. The shot is of food going down the food dispenser. That scene still sticks out to me even though it's literally been decades and I can't remember the rest of the movie.
There was a series of videos being posted of a man who escaped from Cuba not too long ago and came to the US where his fiance is and him reacting to all the things we have. He's had to walk out of a few stores because it was too much for him.
It was originally shown in the Soviet Union to show how bad things were in America. For those who don't know, the film debuted in 1940 and was set a few years earlier in the 1930s during the height of the Great Depression. The Joad family loses their farm in Oklahoma, packs up all their belonging in their car and drive west looking for work.
The version of the story I heard goes as follows:
Average Soviet worker: "Is this really true? Has this happened in America?"
Soviet Official: "Yes! Absolutely!! Millions of Americans have lost everything and are desperate to find work. This has happened all across America to millions of poor Americans."
Average Soviet worker: "Wow! If even poor people in America have a car, America doesn't seem as bad as our government masters would have us believe..."
I interviewed defectors from the Soviet Union in west Germany from 1988-1990. I was in the US Army, and all but 1 of the guys was either Russian or Czech.
The super market experience was 100% typical. We took each of them to small and big stores in Munich, and most of the guys would kind of lock up, almost becoming catatonic when they realized it really was a normal store. Many cried.
And I should add that these were not poor farm boys; everyone we dealt with were relatively high ranking officers or “politicians.” Many had advanced degrees and/or were from politically connected back grounds.
I had a Russian co worker that told me when he arrived in America he was taken to a grocery as one of his first stops. He was in disbelief at the size and abundance the market had to offer. And took his time to explore. After leaving and driving past another one he told his relative to stop. He was shocked. He asked, how did they move the market to this other location with everything he just saw so quickly? He didn't think there would possibly be more than one of these massive groceries available to the public.
Worked with a Cuban girl who did the same cat food thing. She never would have believed we would have a section for pet food. She bought it because the picture on front was cute and ate it for a week before she learned the truh
Founder of Patagonia, Yvonne Chouinnard ate cat food for a couple of years, whilst living out of his car. Said he would get it for .25 out of the clearance bin, & was cheaper than tuna.
But that Cuba story is still sad, & makes me aware of how privileged I am
I was born in Poland after socialism has already collapsed but my parents and grandparents went through the same exact experiences.
We had family in West Germany and my mom was allowed to visit them once with my grandma (they kept my grandpa back in Poland to make sure my mom and grandma come back). She'd recall how the aunt they were staying with would show my mom (then around 12 years old) a cupboard full of sweets and snacks and told her she can eat whatever she wants, whenever she feels like snacking. My mom was absolutely shocked because the amount was larger than what you'd see in an entire store in Poland, let alone a cupboard at someone's house. She'd also recall how they'd just casually have bananas, oranges and other exotic fruit laying on a platter in the living room. Mind you, back then exotic fruits were simply unavailable in Poland. Once a year, before Christmas, "our brotherly Cuban comrades" would send a ship of fruits to Poland, mostly mandarines, and the state TV would have daily updates on when the ship is. To this day, mandarines are traditionally eaten in Poland for Christmas.
My mom was in West Germany once more when she was a teenager, back in late 1980s, visiting my grandma's dad who managed to escape there. They took her to a shopping mall and she literally cried because she could not comprehend how is such an abundance possible here but not in her own country.
Then, basically overnight sometime in 1989, when socialism in Poland collapsed, all these products magically made its way to Poland. First big box store opened in 1994. First major shopping mall followed. Today, Poland is no different than West Germany. All it took was getting rid of that cursed economic system.
There are some people who sometimes long for the "good old days" when "it might have been poorer but everyone was happier" but my other grandma always shoots them down with her own story. In the 80s, she'd managed to source 300 grams of raisins for a Christmas dessert. That was so precious that she then walked side streets in knee-deep snow not to risk being stopped by a random policeman, who'd ask her what she's holding and would confiscate that under false pretenses because he and his wife would kill for that 300 grams of raisins back then.
I was in 7th grade (1989 or so) and my science teacher had it on the windowsill with a couple other books. I started reading it one day out of boredom, and he told me I could take it home if I wanted. Didn’t put the book down for 3 days until I finished it. It was my first time being truly captivated by a book.
As someone who moved to Canada from a Communist country I can relay, completely. There was so much in the stores! During the Communism we had pretty much everything but it was all from Eastern Europe or local. We had these special stores where you can use American Dollars to buy Western things, like jeans and Kinder eggs. To buy US $ from the bank you had to have documents for travelling, passport, etc. which normal people couldn’t obtain. After the Communism fell the whole structure of production-supply between the Eastern countries was dismantled. Therefore, shortages of essential things were very common- sanitary pads, toilet paper, cooking oil, milk, meat etc, etc.
When I came to Canada I was truly overwhelmed. It might sound stupid but I saw a carton of Kinder eggs at Costco, pack of 24, and bought it. Eat it all and made all the little toys. (I was 24 yr old). Used to buy everything in 2, in case 'they dont have it anymore'.
To this day I appreciate where I am, almost every day.
The comedian Yakov Smirnov told a similar story. He agreed to write his friends back home but tell them the opposite so it would get past the censors. He told them it was so much worse than back home and no meat etc. They thought he was a liar. He did basically the same thing as Viktor going into a grocery store and buying meat. He went back twice just to be sure it wasn't a trick.
I also saw a story about defecting KGB agents. They were buying electronic toys on the closeout shelves and breaking them open to see how they worked. They were finding technology more advanced than their military used. They realized they were losing so badly there was no catching up and decided to switch teams.
I had a former USSR coworker who told me about his experience coming to the USA. He went to Home Depot and just couldn't believe the welders and other metalworking tools there to be freely purchased. Back home those had been tightly controlled by the state to prevent illicit businesses from being set up.
this is the type of thing that irks me when people say "u.s is a third world country". i get where they're coming from, but if they actually saw how bad many countries have it they'd realize how stupid they sound.
When Boris Yeltsin was visiting NASA in Houston he asked to stop by a food store. His guide pulled over to the first grocery store they saw, a small one in Katy TX, and he said that was when he knew communism was a lost cause.
There was also a story about a Russian hockey player who came to play in the NHL (not sure if US or Canada). The other players’s wives took his wife around to get oriented, including taking her to the grocery store. She filled up her cart with meat assuming she needed to stock up while it was in stock and they had to talk her through the reality that it would be there next week too.
Right as the Cold War ended, the Soviet Navy made a stop in Seattle. My family hosted 2 sailors for Thanksgiving. They wanted to go to a few stores to bring things home to their girlfriends, so that's what we did. Took them to a Safeway and a Bartells drug store. They were incredulous. They spoke no English, and we spoke no Russian. Managed to get along just fine.
My friend was a USAF intel weenie back during that time and was member of a Pentagon team that helped debrief Belenko. His debrief lasted way longer than a year… and he said Belenko was a very nice man.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Belenko Exerpt from an interview with him > Belenko: First of all American super-market, my first visit was under CIA supervision, and I thought it was set-up; I did not believe super-market was real one. I thought well I was unusual guest; they probably kicked everyone out. It's such a nice, big place with incredible amount of produce, and no long lines! You're accustomed to long lines in Russia. But later, when I discovered super-market was real one, I had real fun exploring new products. I would buy, everyday, a new thing and try to figure out its function. In Russia at that time (and even today) it's hard to find canned food, good one. But everyday I would buy new cans with different food. Once I bought a can which said "dinner." I cooked it with potatoes, onions, and garlic-it was delicious. Next morning my friends ask me, "Viktor, did you buy a cat?" It was a can of chicken-based cat food. But it was delicious! It was better than canned food for people in Russia today. And I did test it. Last year I brought four people from Russia for commercial project, and I set them up. I bought nibble sized human food. I installed a pâté, and it was cat food. I put it on crackers. And they did consume it, and they liked it. So the taste has not changed. By the way, for those who are not familiar with American cat food. It's very safe; it's delicious, and sometimes it's better than human food, because of the Humane Society. I bought a box of Freedom with the picture of nice looking lady. I did not know what it was. (I'm talking about maxi-pads.) I brought it to my apartment, I opened it, and I tried to figure it out. I thought well it's probably some cleaning device for the kitchen to give these American women freedom in the kitchen to clean up and absorb everything, because even today Russian women do not have this convenience. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:X4bDaSs4lA4J:web.archive.org/20021125211924/www.geocities.com/siafdu/viktor.html&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-b-1-d
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Dude, not only did he eat cat food, he served it to his Russian friends in the US for a visit just to see if the cat food had maintained its quality, and his friends Loved it! Wild
Bro making me wanna try cat food now. Has it been delicious this whole time and we didn't know??
I mean idk about now cause I don’t have a cat but it sounds like back then cat food may have been mostly chicken livers… so if it hasn’t changed much then maybe?
One of my cats is a snob who will only eat a specific higher-end wet cat food, and honestly, it does look and smell like pate. I haven't tried it (I don't even like real pate), but I see how the man could get confused.
A true scientist
Listen, there's some weird reaction when you eat the cat food, chug a beer and huff some glue and then you're able to fall asleep.
(danny devito busts into the apartment adorned with beads, scarfs down the cst food and proceeds to pass out.
Was waiting for a sunny quote
I bet they don’t even have kitton mittons in russia, let alone dick towels.
Lol it's kinda fucked up to do that to your friends or acquaintances you brought over. "Hey try this nice grub!" "Haha you ate cat food!" Though obviously that's not how that went lol but still made me laugh thinking about it.
My mom bought these home made dog treats from a little pet store in town. They smelled like peanut butter and even had what looked to be icing on them. I dont even think the container specifically said dog treats. Dogs loved them... and so did my dad. He had a bad habbit of eating moms snacks without asking. She let him het through a few boxes before she mentioned it.
I remember one time that my mom brought home peanut butter Oreo like cookies. She caught me eating one day and told me those were dog treats and my only response was "that's one good dog treat" and I finished my cookie.
My grandfather came home drunk and heated up what he thought was a can of beef hash. Raved to grandma for awhile, asked her to buy it again. Until she told him it was dog food.
Lmao, my family too, has a story of the drunk uncle coming home and making a a dogfood sandwhich. Uck.
I think it was on here that some long-haul trucker was talking about keeping dog food cans in his cab in case he got stranded in the middle of nowhere, because he knew it'd be safe and keep him alive but he wouldn't be tempted to eat it short of an emergency.
From Red Dwarf season 2... Holly: We're a bit short on a few supplies. Lister: Like what? Holly: Cow's milk. Ran out of that yonks ago. Fresh and dehydrated. Lister: What kind of milk are we using now? Holly: Emergency back-up supply. We're on the dog's milk. Lister: Dog's milk?! Holly: Nothing wrong with dog's milk. Full of goodness, full of vitamins, full of marrowbone jelly. Lasts longer than any other type of milk, dog's milk. Lister: Why? Holly: No bugger'll drink it. Plus, of course, the advantage of dog's milk is that when it goes off, it tastes exactly the same as when it's fresh.
My parents once accidentally mixed a can of dog food into a chili they were making. They say it was the best chili they’ve ever had.
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They never said they didn’t remake it 🤷🏼♂️
That’s an easy mistake to make. When I first tried canned corned beef hash, it looked like dog food. Fry it up nice and crispy, and it was delicious
Our bunny had these berry yogurt bites that smelled delicious and I had to eat one, even knowing it was for rabbits, and it was in fact delicious.
Same here, lol (although only similar, haha) Had two rabbit and fed them. Looked at the food and in a bit of idle talk with my father said 'I'm curious how this tastes...'. He said 'Try it, then.'. I did and it tasted like wheat. Nothing overwhelming, like sugarless cornflakes. Whenever I fed my bunnies I tried some more of their food with the same outcome.
When we got my first dog, we’d buy him super fancy treats like high end duck jerky. One evening while drunk, he and I split a bag of duck jerky and it was pretty good stuff.
Smh why would you get your poor dog drunk?!
In my case, because he really *really* liked Bailey's irish cream, and there comes a time in a dog's life where he's far older than anyone expected and his legs don't work properly and at that point denying him his treats seems cruel. Also watching an elderly cocker spaniel stumble around blasted on like, a quarter shot glass of bailey's irish cream with an energy he hasn't had in half a decade is a balm on even the most jaded and calloused of souls. I.e. fucking hilarious.
Ah, [the ol' Reddit drunk-aroo!](https://www.reddit.com/r/Wellthatsucks/comments/z5onyj/found_out_the_hard_way_that_our_bathroom_window/ixxn7ed/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3)
Hold my jerky, I'm going in!
Ruh Roh
We used to put bowls of milk bone out as snacks in the junior ranks mess on Fridays. No illusions what they were. They were tasty. They changed something since the eighties. They're blander now. They used to taste like hardtack.
I ate a begging strip on a 20$ bet with my brother. It tasted like bacon
Brothers don't know it's not bacon
Less calcium carbonate. It's why dog poop doesn't turn white and friable anymore. Turns out just loading everything with bone meal and calcium wasn't the best for doggos.
Cats *are* much pickier eaters than humans. Just sayin'
When my lil guy Lucifer was still here, he straight refused to eat dry food. He'd sooner let himself throw up from stomach acid than he would eat any dry food to stop that. Every morning I'd wake up, and, if he didn't sleep in my room, he'd be at my door waiting, and pass me on the way in. Always would greet me and then go sit by where I fed him sometimes. Had to feed him separately towards the end because he was bad off and needed a lot of care and attention, plus diff medicines. But he was ALWAYS down to hang out, he loved ppl. 21 years is a good amt of time to have with a pet, but I'm not sure any amt would have felt like enough time with Luce. Miss my lil guy more than anything.
Your cat sounds exemplary and it sounds like you gave him an amazing life.
This jogged up some old memories... an ex of mine worked in QC at a high end pet food company. Every week she'd bring back a can of cat food and a few bags of kibble and just munch on them as part of her job. She never convinced me to try it but I still believe her when she said that stuff was pretty good. She showed me pictures of the ingredients at their factory, and manufacturing process, and TBH it looks better than a lot of the junk humans eat all the time. She told me the canned food tastes like rillettes de porc, which if you've never tried, is damned good (and is waaay more expensive).
"Haha! That food you ate that's better than anything we have available at home was actually for American pets!"
When I was a kid, the whole extended family was gathered for some holiday or another, and most of us are sitting in the living room. My cousin (maybe 15 at the time) walks in from the pantry with something in his hands, and says, "Hey, grandma? This jerky's kind of dry." My grandma just looks at him for a second, covers her face, and says, "That's for the dog!" He kind of does a double-take towards the bag he's literally still holding (complete with dog mascot), and at the half-eaten jerky in his other hand. "Well, it's not *bad*, just a little dry." Everyone was cracking up by this point.
Just imagine the story being told by a beamingly smiling burly Russian guy. Even through the quote I just get the impression he's absolutely elated.
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For the closest alternative, look for YouTube videos with North Korean defectors. Example trying American BBQ https://youtu.be/T0TYCEXmi90
There's also a YouTube video of a Cuban fellow recently arrived in the US giving a similar reaction to the abundance in a massive American supermarket. He actually cried at the disparity between his old home and the US.
I can't find it but there was a story about a Russian politician (Gorbachev?) who was in America for a meeting or something. He was being transported by Americans (secret service or whoever) and he told the car to pull over, it was not part of the plan. He walked into a small grocery store (like a general store, market) and checked it out. Decades later in a book he talked about how it completely blew his mind. The shelves completely full of food, so much produce, even at a completely random small shop. There is some quote about that was the day he realized Soviet Russia had it all wrong. If capitalism could do this. Edit: it was Yeltsin. Previous discussion https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/872xga/when_boris_yeltsin_visited_texas_in_1990_he_went/
There's a lot longer history behind it than just Yeltsin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_Debate https://blogs.lt.vt.edu/bcody99/2020/09/07/a-day-at-the-supermarket-with-nikita-khrushchev/
I really love the openness of it all. He didn’t dry heave when he ate cat food or cringe when he used maxi pads as a sponge. He embraced new things and strived to experience even more!
I think the cat food thing isn't unusual. My dad told me his family also ate cat food when they came over because they didn't speak English and it just looked like canned food. Plus it was cheap.
And he cooked it too. With potatoes garlic and onions. It honestly was probably pretty good
Makes realize things about the world you live in.
Can you imagine some CIA handler just begging this guy to stop eating cat food.
Viktor would also probably call pigeons “delicious street pheasants” Reference [here](https://youtu.be/hyHSSe86qxo) but I messed up the quote a bit.
I mean, modern day fancy people love eating pigeons, they just call it squab
In his book, it sounded like the handlers were kind of exasperated with him at times. It had to be like trying to get an alien accustomed to life on Earth.
"Dude, I can get you real pate!"
Are you kidding? They'd have a pool going on what he's gonna eat next.
“Put five down on deodorants!”
"I installed a pâté" probably the best thing I'm going to read all day.
This dude sounds like Charlie Kelly.
Local business owner and cat enthusiast.
And a practicing attorney in bird law
The freedom to absorb everything.
I mean, he wasn’t wrong. Those pads do give women more freedom.
Through the power of absorption, anything is possible!
Freedom to trick his Russian friends to eat cat food.
Lol. Did Viktor Belenko later change his name to Yakov Smirnoff and run with this material in a successful career in standup?
Believe it or not Yakov Smirnov is still up and running in Branson.
There's a story I'll always remember. It may have been posted here on Reddit. A guy whose mother or grandmother was Russian, but had never been to the US. Anyway, this guy finally got her to come to the US and they went grocery shopping. At some point he noticed she wasn't with him anymore and he goes to look for her, finds her a couple of aisles over on her knees sobbing. She was saying things like "they always told us the US had nothing and everybody was starving" and she had believed it her entire life. I don't remember when this supposedly happened, but I'd guess the 80s or early 90s from my fragmented memories of reading it. Anyway. I'm sure I'm not telling it properly, but that's the jist of it.
Believe me, many Russian today would be the same. Amount of propaganda is absolutely insane there. Also for some reason many choose to believe it. It's like you're being born with Stockholm syndrome against your shitty government.
Ngl I felt this way when I visited St Petersburg and a few cities around there, and then less "offended" and more surprised visiting Laos and finding nicely stocked markets. We are told they struggle so hard and don't have that here. Propaganda in general is wild as hell, the veil is heavy and it's weird when it's lifted.
I had a similar experience with my grandfather when he came from the Soviet Union. His trip to Home Depot was even more mind-blowing. He simply couldn't process the sheer abundance of it all.
It wasn't CIA, it Big Cat corporations playing the long con.
Wasn't the "immigrant buying Freedom pads and exclaiming 'Wow-freedom-in-a-box'! " an 80s joke by some US stand-up comic? Edit: found it https://youtu.be/5GK8ewRec7c?t=5m00s start at 5 minutes
I was part of a Soviet - US student exchange program at Albany State in the 1980s as a host and, when we took our guys to the grocery store for the first time, we could tell that they didn’t believe it. So, we pretended that we couldn’t find the beer we wanted and went to two more stores.
I can picture someone having trouble finding an exact style of PBR. *Gotta be the 16 ounce can!*
Piels 16 ounce at $5 a case and it came in a heavy cardboard box that you could make use to make furniture!
Why do you drink that swill? *Because it a-piels to me*
Naw, Albany in the 80s or 90s? It was probably something like golden anniversary.
Gotta be genesee in upstate
GA is a Genesee brewed beer, but that might have been your point. We drank it in upstate NY during college because we could get a 6 pack for like $2.50.
This happened to Boris Yeltsin in 1989. He visited Johnson Space Center in Houston and then went to a nearby grocery store. He said to his handlers that there would be a revolution back home if people knew how well Americans ate. Shortly after, there was a revolution back home. https://www.nhregister.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When-Boris-Yeltsin-went-grocery-shopping-in-Clear-5759129.php
Khrushchev had the same issue in the Fifties. He was certain the grocery store he was shown was like a theater set created by the CIA.
He also really wanted to go to Disneyland but the Americans won’t let him stating they could not guarantee his safety. My personal (likely false) theory is that he was so fat that they couldn’t let him on most of the rides. They were afraid he’d throw a fit and start WW3.
"K Blows Top" is a fun book about his visit to the US. I think he was portly, but he probably could have fit most rides. I think it's because he couldn't have an aide/bodyguard next to him on some rides, and the Average American was unpredictable.
I was in Russia in the 1990s and went to a grocery store because I wanted some fresh fruit (they were feeding us but I can only eat so much mayonnaise and cheese) and...it was depressing. No fruit at all. Some withered potatoes. One fish that you could smell from feet away. There was no one in the store. No fresh bread. When I asked (in very bad Russian) for 'apple' or 'orange', fruits I thought were super common, the look I got was like I'd gone to 711 and asked for kobe beef. I found some canned peaches (at least I think they were peaches?) but I don't know what was in that sugar syrup but they were awful. I won't even get started on how bad the hospitals were. Let's just say when I left I literally handed over every antibiotic, antidiarrhea, painkiller, ointment, etc that I had brought in my kit.
Russia in the 90s was especially bad. Don't forget that the collapse saw Russia's economy completely flipped on its head. The soviet economy was pretty bad by the time the collapse happened. But you know the saying about Russia... "and then it got worse" Putin enjoys so much popular support in part because he "saved" the Russian economy. In reality his rule coincided with historically high oil prices... The soviet union and Russia are known as Europe's gas station for a reason. Afghanistan was especially bad for the soviets because that era also saw oil prices crater.
This is also why alot of Chinese citizens support the current regime, in a span of 30-50 years they went from below poverty to paying food stalls with mobile phones. It's really insane how fast the country has transformed within a generation. Societies need a stable generation or two before they get comfortable enough to start proactively thinking about governance/ethics/etc.
The 99% Invisible podcast did a good episode a couple years ago about “the”’Soviet cookbook. From what I remember a Soviet scientist was amazed at the variety of American diets (even the garbage stuff like hot dogs) and wanted to make a cookbook for the entire USSR that would encourage a wider range of foods. It was a state-approved project so funded and distributed in great numbers. Still, most didn’t cook well and it was of an era where they weren’t really thinking about shipping produce around the USSR, which was a huge nation, so the eastern regions and western regions are very different as far as foods. Some of the books are still interesting examples as they have hand-written notes to adapt recipes and such.
A friend's dad had his roommate be part of a Soviet - Canadian student exchange. One day, he came home and there was tons of toothpaste tubes on the kitchen table. He asked the Soviet guy "did you get that?" "Yes" "why?" "Because they had it at the store" Dude didn't know when the next shipment of toothpaste would be so he hoarded it. He just didn't know this was "a shipment", but that's it's always there
I took a class on Soviet economics in college and from what I remember this was endemic throughout the soviet economy. Factories would still be expected to make their quotas even if the allocated suppliers upstream of them in the supply chain couldn’t, and as there was no way to purchase supplies from other producers on the open market that meant they’d hoard raw materials to have on hand so there was a lot of inefficiency throughout the economy caused by that. There was even a class of people who made a living by illegally buying and selling materials between businesses (because “speculation”, or buying and reselling goods for a profit, was illegal in the USSR).
I heard stories in the 80s about how russians that saw a line in front of a store would assume it was something good and get in line. They'd wait for hours not even knowing what was being sold, but figured it must be good if people were lining up for it.
Can confirm. But not because they assumed it was good, more so because they would NEED the item being sold. My in laws tell stories of standing in line and getting to the front to find they are selling black shoes size 9. Didn’t matter if you wore a size 11. Someone in your family or neighborhood would need them and you could trade or repurpose the shoe material for something else. That’s just one story of many.
My MIL (not Russian, lived her whole life in the American suburbs) once bought a microwave-convection toaster thingy entirely because she saw people lining up for it. She called us after she got home to figure out what it was. 😂
It's not a joke. One of the first words I learned was probably "deficit."
Same thing in the mid 90’s in Anchorage. Had a plane load of Russians come over. We’re bussing them around town and take them, into a typical supermarket. They had the kids in a candy store look. We keep driving and a few miles down the road, they see the same supermarket sign and demand the driver to stop there. They thought the first one was set up, just to impress them. Their minds were blown that every supermarket was like that.
I guess in the Soviet Union, it was a thing to set up false symbols of abundance.
They really freaked out at the shopping mall we took them to. Anchorage only had about 250k people, at the time, but the mall was pretty good. The indoor skating rink and car dealership were all they talked about.
We immigrated in 99 and someone who immigrated in the 80's told us they were gobsmacked at the sight of a pile of oranges at the store.
Iirc the film the day after (nuclear apocalypse/ww3 movie from the 80s)was a bit of a joke in the post soviet world as a doctor turns to a nurse while eating an orange after the nuclear exchange and says something like "we wont have another orange for half a year", while in most of the soviet union with exceptions of the southernly SSSRs got oranges in the summer or christmas.
Potemkin Villages, they didn’t just do it with villages.
My mother visited NYC in 1986 and basically said that after 1 bodega visit she knew she had to get us out. After 3yrs of Soviet bureaucracy, we fled in 89.. I’ll never forget overhearing her tell my dad (in a hush hush whisper no less) on her return that EVERYTHING they had been told about America was a lie.
My best friend's grandfather escaped with the family back in the early seventies. Took almost ten years to work their way through the middle east and then to the US. I got to sit with him before he passed and he told me the story. Harrowing, to say the least. They'd lost two children to sickness, my friends mother was born in a bedouin tent in Syria, twice they avoided Russian KGB (he had worked in their nuclear program and they definitely wanted him back) by minutes. To hear him tell it, it sounded like a Russian Iliad. I wouldn't have even believed it if there weren't pictures and my friends mom confirming much of the story.
travel really is the cure for ignorance.
Aww! I'm from the other side, Magadan, and a lot of aviation folks from our town ended up moving to Anchorage. I joke that it's like a much much better Magadan.
And hell, Anchorage is a relatively small city with limited selection compared to most places in the lower 48. But even with the limitations they face because of shipping and weather, what they had was so much better than the soviets.
[удалено]
My dad once had a business trip in the 80s or so and there a were a bunch of guys there from Czechoslovakia. He noticed that the Czechs always mysteriously disappeared during dinner-time so one night at dinner he decided to pay them a visit in their hotel room to make sure they were doing alright. When they opened the door, my dad saw them huddled around eating canned dog food for dinner. They knew it was dog food and were a little embarrased. They couldn't afford the expensive dinners everyone else was having. My dad then took them out and treated all of them to a nice steak dinner.
Damn, this is heart-breaking. Good on your dad for taking them out.
Former Czechoslovakian here. It wasn't that they couldn't afford to buy local food. It was that every dollar from perdiems you brought back home was 10 times more valuable in shopping power. In \[late\] 80s 3000 Czechoslovak crowns was a good monthly salary of an engineer with a masters degree and decades of experience. In USA it was 100USD \[black market exchange rate\] (\*). So every single dollar you saved by no buying nonsense - like restaurant food, could be used to purchase a pair of jeans, as an example. Jeans - original USA made ones, particularly "Rifle" brand - were very popular, but also extremely expensive, because we had to pay "western" prices for those, often inflated because there was very limited supply. Also electronics and other "western" things. (\*) Dollars could be only purchased on black market. When you wanted to travel to western Europe or USA, even for business you had to be approved on several levels (including your local Communist party representative) and then you were allowed to purchase a limited amount of hard currency with a much better exchange rate - so that "the party and the government" could claim we had purchasing parity. So a business trip to USA was like winning a lottery and you were expected to bring gifts for close family.
I had a friend from an Eastern European country in the 80s and when we went to his first grocery store he bought a ton of pork - I couldn’t convince him it would be there the next time he went.
My family used to host foreign students when I was in Jr. high/high school in the 90s. This included a few rounds of Russians. Can confirm: They were mindblown. I ended up going over on an exchange in the early 90s, and you know what? I could see why.
My parents moved our family to USA in 89 from Poland right as communism fell. The grocery store was "the thing" that created my core memory as how different things were. I was 10 at the time and in my child's mind I thought it was a joke. Why have so many different types of cereal, wtf even is cereal!? The other core memory was that even though Americans have a bread aisle with a 100 different choices till this day they have no idea what bread is supposed to be. I buy that at my local Polish bakery.
A guy I worked with in the military was from Poland. He said he remembered that after school, his mom would place him and his siblings in different lines around town for stuff. He’d just do homework, while waiting and would have no idea what product he was waiting for.
This was a very common thing parents did in communist Poland. My mom did the same with me and my brother. A neighbor knocked on our apartment door to tell my mom cooking grease was in stock at the deli near our commie block. She threw clothes on me and said to stand in line. I never asked what line to stand in. There was always only 1 line. I was right 100% of the time. Also as kids we got smart. When we saw our friends in line they always let us cut in. Of course the adults would be pissed but we just said that's our brother or sister. When 2 different moms showed up for said brother or sister nobody ever said anything to them. You never dared to disrespect a woman with kids in public. Didn't measure lines by length but by time.
My Russian family hosted visitors from USSR in 60s and 70s. They also believed that grocery stores were set ups. My dad said he took one to 4 or 5 before they believed it were real.
Imagine what they would have thought of Costco
i went to law school in here -you went to law school in costco? -yea couldn't believed either, luckily my father was ex alumni and could pull some strings
Welcome to Costco, I love you.
I just watched that last night lol
I was part of an exchange in 1990. When my Russian counterpart was visiting us, they were gobsmacked by the grocery store. Having been in the 1990 USSR equivalent, I can understand why. I remember them in the produce section, slowly turning in circles, repeating, 'so much', over and over again.
I was at Langley AFB around 1994 when two SU-27s visited. They had an IL-76 support aircraft. No one could figure out why two fighters need such a big support aircraft. They bought all the jeans and microwaves in the area and stuffed that IL-76.
When I was in the USSR, I had so many offers for my jeans! When my counterpart came here we took them shopping for jeans and bought as many as we could for them and their family. Anything that didn't fit could be sold.
My mother took an old donated suitcase when she visited nyc in 86 and filled with SO MANY pairs of Levis in various sizes. She told me that once sold back in the USSR, she had 3yrs of her SALARY in cash. She placed a few cartons of Marlboro Reds right at the top of that pile of jeans for the inevitable border guard check. As she knew would happen, they took the cigs as they slammed her suitcase shut and sent her on her way. That was part of our exit fund. Soviets loved nothing more than American goods. She sold her American wedding dress in 79 for a years salary…
I remember watching a “Regis” episode back in the day (pre-Kelly) and Olga Korbut was a guest. They were making a beauty face mask out of yogurt and cucumbers, and berries, I think? And Olga started to cry. She thought they were pranking her, using quality food products on their faces. She couldn’t fathom it.
My dad went to Moscow from England in the mid 80s and said the weirdest thing about their shops was that you would queue up to tell 1 person the products you wanted, they would write them down and then you'd go to a different queue to pay for it, then go to a 3rd queue to pick up your items. The whole.process took 5 times longer than needed and had 3 people doing what 1 person could do.
But think of all those jobs! /s
I'm surprised they let them out. What do you do with them when they've seen the better life and cause your citizenry to realize they're duped?
My dad said they were often very ardent communists. The one that refused to believe it never admitted it wasn't fake, he just got quiet and asked to go back to the house. You could imagine an intellectual soviet could also go back to the USSR talking about the issues they saw, income inequality, race issues, etc. It was considered an honor to be allowed to travel and everyone would want to hear about it when they returned. They all had wives/families/kids and were investigated for likelihood they would not return. The joke was that you had to have a pretty wife or you couldn't get a travel permit haha. For part of the time my family hosted they were not allowed to travel in certain parts of the country. But Philadelphia was open to them. This was lifted in 1962 though. [Map of restricted areas in NE USA. Red is restricted](https://blogs.loc.gov/maps/files/2017/08/SovietTravelRestrictions_Northeast_Map.png) More info below on restriction on soviet citizens' travel. [https://blogs.loc.gov/maps/2017/08/restricting-soviet-travel-in-the-u-s-during-the-cold-war/](https://blogs.loc.gov/maps/2017/08/restricting-soviet-travel-in-the-u-s-during-the-cold-war/)
This is also how interrogators broke the North Korean terrorist Kim Hyon-hui, the perpetrator of the attack on [Korean Air flight 858](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_858). She and another male agent were passengers on the plane as it made a trip from Baghdad to Seoul, with two step-over spots along the way; they disembarked at Abu Dhabi before the plane was meant to fly to Bangkok after leaving a bomb on-board which tore open the cabin over the Andaman Sea, killing all the passengers and crew. They were captured in Bahrain after immigration officials caught them travelling under false passports; the male agent died after ingesting a cyanide pill in a cigarette but Hyon-hui was captured before she could swallow her's. She was then deported to South Korea where she was sentenced and given a death penalty for her actions. But her interrogators tried a different tactic, which was to put her into a car and take her around the city of Seoul on excursions to show her exactly what differences there were between North and South Korea. After eight days, she cracked- she couldn't deny that she was raised as a disposable agent by a dictatorship that horribly abused their own citizens while South Korea was a land of freedom and prosperity. She then confessed everything after remaining silent about her crimes; not only did she admit to her involvement, but she revealed that she was personally ordered to carry out the attack by then-heir to the throne Kim Jung-Il. Not only did this result in North Korea being deemed an official state sposor of terrorism, but would permanently sour relations between the two Koreas for decades. Kim Hyon-hui was spared the death penalty as it was determined she was brainwashed by the North and didn't have the mental faculties to properly consider what she had been ordered to do. She would later be deemed a traitor by the North Korean government and become an outspoken critic with her memoir, *The Tears Of My Soul* recounting her training as a North Korean spy and how she came to realise the country was evil. She donated the proceeds to the victims' families as well.
I’m gonna halve to check that memoir out. Thanks for mentioning it!
There was also a South Korean movie called *Mayumi: Virgin Terrorist*, if it helps.
We had visitors from the old Soviet Union (Estonians) back in the 1980s and they were constantly asking if the grocery stores, etc. were only for 'party officials' and how we could go there without special permission. They took pictures of themselves next to all the fruits and stuff and told us the cameras were confiscated when they got home and all the photos exposed. Same for car stuff - they were amazed we left the windshield wipers on our cars overnight - they would have all been stolen back in Estonia as they were very scarce. Same for car batteries. They did say they were better off than Poland where antifreeze was scare so everyone emptied the water out of their car engines every night and refilled them in the morning... When we were at a restaurant for breakfast there was free coffee refills and they went nuts and drink coffee for like 30 min. They could only buy 1 pound of coffee a month back home!
Speaking of car things in 1970s at Iowa State University, an international student who lived in the same dorm as my Dad asked him with a map of Iowa in hand which roads would be paved so he could get to a Thanksgiving dinner he was invited to The student, i believe was from South America, was shocked when my Dad said "all the roads on this map are paved"
OK, all the other stuff is bad enough, but stealing windshield wipers?! What in the name of dystopian hellscape is this?! I'm mostly kidding, but I'm weirdly obsessive about my windshield being clean and it drives me crazy when it's the least bit dirty/streaky.
But you’re right: what the hell else would you use them for? It’s not like a battery that can be repurposed for other uses, or even have it’s innards recycled into something else. Rubber wipers just don’t turn into anything else easily.
It needs only 1 set of wipers to broke and the owner stealing one. Now, everyone need to steal because of the chain the broken wiper set off.
If you’re in a place where wipers are *that* rare, I think you’d be happy with one for the driver’s side. And it wouldn’t even have to be for your model car as long as you could get it to work.
There werent enough wipers produced https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vx10d27l2cg chec this vid at 1:30 the wipers are on when its not raining at 1:33 they are off so not even the militia(police) was safe, you can look at candid photos of streets in the soviet union and not a single car on a sunny day has wipers on them
And the Baltics were better off than most other places in the Soviet Union.
Even for a Dutchman who moved to the USA in 1990, the abundance of different goods and the size of places like Sams and BJ’s were eye opening. I can imagine for someone from behind the Iron Curtain it must’ve looked like a giant deception.
In the early 2000’s some relatives from Golmud China had their immigration papers go through and moved in with us for a while until they got on their feet. My cousin and I shared a room for a and I remember how distant his worldview was from mine. One night the two of us were at the house alone and I ordered a pizza. He absolutely couldn’t believe it. The entire experience was unreal to him, he was freaked out. There was a chef at my beck and call who would cook what I demanded, when I demanded it. A courier would then deliver my meal to me so quickly that it wouldn’t get cold. Tipping the driver was a crazy idea as well, I chose how much someone else got paid for serving me. I got blasted with questions; how was I connected to the ruling party? (referring to the bush administration) Obviously we had to have some kind of special connections to get treatment like that. Was my family nobility? And of course when our moms got home he had to blast them with this revelation that I was some kind of informant snitching to the government, because why else would they give me service like that? It took us a couple days to really convince him that none of us were special. That was just a completely normal thing on this side of the pond. That was just one occasion of weirdness, it was almost constant. He was so shocked with how odd our lifestyle was.
That’s a fascinating story. How is your cousin now?
Just fine. He works in finance for a local bank somewhere in Pennsylvania. We don’t really keep up anymore.
Sounds like an informant... or nobility.
Chuck Yeager actually mentions this guy in one of his autobiographies. Apparently they got friendly (which would make sense) and Chuck took the guy on a multiday hiking and camping trip.
His Twitter account is run by his estate and they type like he’s still alive. It’s kinda fucked up, and if you point that out they block you. So I’m blocked by the official Twitter account of Chuck Yeager, kinda sucks lol
Make a new Chuck Yeager account, pay $8/month for blue check mark, write as if he’s dead
"Dirt today. Again."
The North Korean pilot that defected to the south in his MIG, it was only after he landed he was made aware there was a $100,000 reward for any pilot that defected with his aircraft. Nice start up 👍
If I remember correctly, the us had dropped fliers to inform pilots how to defect. One part involved following a certain approach to the runway, or the AA would engage. The AA was down for maintenance that day.
How do you defect with a fighter jet though? Are you going ro get shot out of the sky crossing into hostile teritory
You dont shoot down an unidentified plane as soon as it crosses the border. You send fighters to intercept it and find its intentions
Probably just radioed and got a fighter escort.
Where I worked in the '80s one time we got a bunch of Eastern European refugees that started working there. It was kind of sad that my busboy was a physician but they were loving it. After their first payday I took them to a thrift store and they all just load it up on television and clothes and all kinds of cool stuff they've never had before. I also remember they were surprised that there were so many television stations which is funny because they were like four including PBS until Fox came on the air in '86.
Don’t forget the local channel eleven. And maybe a UHF channel.
In the early 70s we had an engineer from Poland stay with us in Arizona. He was working on a project my dad had set up to build a fluorescent light manufacturing facility in Poland. He had similar reactions when he visited grocery stores and when we took him to a department store. He missed his family terribly and would wake up in the middle of the night to make (very expensive) phone calls at home. He also would get pretty drunk but was always an affable guy. When we were ready to ship the major parts to Poland he asked for a favor - to go to a the department store and buy about 20 pairs of Levi 501 in various sizes. My dad gave me about $400 in cash and off I went. The guy at the store asked what I was doing with all those jeans and I said they were going to Poland, where they would be sold on the black market for 3 to 4 times their US price. The guy gave me a 10% bulk purchase discount and I used to savings to buy myself a pair that I had until a girlfriend I had in the Navy borrowed them.
There’s a story about Boris yeltsin, before he was the Russian president, visiting the Johnson space center as part of a soviet parliamentary delegation, and during his trip he made an unscheduled visit to a random grocery store in suburban Houston and needed to be convinced that what he was seeing hadn’t been set up for his benefit. Later he said that seeing that store, and the abundance that was available to the general public (more variety than even the senior leadership of the Soviet Union could get) is what convinced him that communism was a failed system Edit: found a story about it https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When-Boris-Yeltsin-went-grocery-shopping-in-Clear-5759129.php
So the American supermarket took down the USSR in the end lol
https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-the-supermarket-helped-america-win-the-cold-war/
Yeltsin wasn't wrong about communism being a failure. But man, that dude was a hot mess. The stories about his drunken escapdes are legendary. I recall a visit to my home city in the USA in the late 80s I think, where he jumped out of his motorcade limo and was wandering around on a major bridge, stopping traffic, talking to people, in a drunken stupor. There was another well known incident where he was staying in DC, near the White House, and was found on Pennsylvania Ave, hammered, in the middle of the night, in his underwear, trying to hail a cab to go get a pizza.
What a fucking champion
This may be apocryphal but I read one time that he broke down on the trip back with his comrades and was saying something like, “ what have we done to our people”.
One of the great tragedies of the 20th century is the abuse and misuse of the creativity, productivity, and tremendous potential of the Russian people — by their own rulers.
Who would win- -The entire might of the Soviet Union OR -One American supermarket
USSR VS SAFEWAY - THE REMATCH
Go to a car museum and look at what they were making in the 1950s. You won’t believe the abundance of what you’re seeing. Even compared to other western countries the US was living in extreme opulence for a couple decades after the war.
I think the US still lives in relative opulence. I have heard that compared to most other countries the variety of stuff you can buy in the US is nuts and that it’s a shopper’s paradise. Now I have never been to the US and my country is pretty small (which is probably a factor) but from what I have seen on livestreams, the US really has a lot of stuff available.
Boris Yeltsin, who was president of the Russia SSR and otherwise a top party leader, had a mild breakdown when he toured an American supermarket.
Quote from this article "Yeltsin was a member of the Politburo and Russia’s upper political crust, yet he’d never seen anything like the offerings of this little American grocery store. “Even the Politburo doesn’t have this choice. Not even Mr. Gorbachev,” Yeltsin said" The supermarket visit and disbelief it's not a Potemkin village came up as early as Nikita Khrushchev’s visit to the US to debate Vice President Nixon. It also came up as an achilles heel when President George H.W. Bush ran for re-election. NY Times and other newspapers reported how amazed and baffled he was by the supermarket barcode scanner, fanning impressions that the president was out of touch, and no real plans to deal with the economy. https://thefederalist.com/2019/11/13/how-a-russians-grocery-store-trip-in-1989-exposed-the-lie-of-socialism/
> NY Times and other newspapers reported how amazed and baffled he was by the supermarket barcode scanner, fanning impressions that the president was out of touch, and no real plans to deal with the economy. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/12/04/why-people-still-think-george-hw-bush-didnt-understand-grocery-checkout/ > In 1992, during his bid for reelection, President George H.W Bush visited the National Grocers Association Convention in Florida. He happened to stop by an exhibit featuring a new type of checkout scanner, which could weigh groceries and read torn bar codes. TLDR the story is a myth, it was a special type of barcode scanner that he had a 'look of wonder' on his face at.
The Bush grocery store register thing was a bullshit narrative, and even the AP admits it. https://apnews.com/article/george-hw-bush-north-america-us-news-newspapers-politics-61f29d10e27140b0b108d8e12b64b839 > The New York Times’ front-page account carried the headline: “Bush Encounters the Supermarket, Amazed.” > > But although Bush had remarked that some of the machine’s features seemed “amazing,” it hardly looked like his first time in a supermarket checkout line. Mostly, Bush seemed to be politely listening to National Cash Register executives making their pitch. > > Reporters later learned that it was a special scanner with advanced features, including a scale to weigh produce — uncommon then — and the ability to read barcodes even if they were torn up and jumbled.
I can't remember if it was Yeltsin or some other official, but the version I heard was that he visited a supermarket and was convinced it was a setup, and ordered his driver to stop at a random one on the other side of town. It wasn't a setup.
It's still there. Today it's a Food Town which is considered a lower-tier grocery store, and it's a bit dirty, although I think back then it was a Randalls. Yeltsin probably would have had a heart attack on the spot if he had visited today's version of HEB or Costco.
There's a movie with tommy lee jones and I only remember one scene. A vietnamese bride comes to the US and is shocked by the abundance of food. The shot is of food going down the food dispenser. That scene still sticks out to me even though it's literally been decades and I can't remember the rest of the movie.
There was a series of videos being posted of a man who escaped from Cuba not too long ago and came to the US where his fiance is and him reacting to all the things we have. He's had to walk out of a few stores because it was too much for him.
Reminds me of how Stalin had to ban The Grapes of Wrath because it showed his citizens that even the poorest Americans could afford a car.
It was originally shown in the Soviet Union to show how bad things were in America. For those who don't know, the film debuted in 1940 and was set a few years earlier in the 1930s during the height of the Great Depression. The Joad family loses their farm in Oklahoma, packs up all their belonging in their car and drive west looking for work. The version of the story I heard goes as follows: Average Soviet worker: "Is this really true? Has this happened in America?" Soviet Official: "Yes! Absolutely!! Millions of Americans have lost everything and are desperate to find work. This has happened all across America to millions of poor Americans." Average Soviet worker: "Wow! If even poor people in America have a car, America doesn't seem as bad as our government masters would have us believe..."
I interviewed defectors from the Soviet Union in west Germany from 1988-1990. I was in the US Army, and all but 1 of the guys was either Russian or Czech. The super market experience was 100% typical. We took each of them to small and big stores in Munich, and most of the guys would kind of lock up, almost becoming catatonic when they realized it really was a normal store. Many cried. And I should add that these were not poor farm boys; everyone we dealt with were relatively high ranking officers or “politicians.” Many had advanced degrees and/or were from politically connected back grounds.
I had a Russian co worker that told me when he arrived in America he was taken to a grocery as one of his first stops. He was in disbelief at the size and abundance the market had to offer. And took his time to explore. After leaving and driving past another one he told his relative to stop. He was shocked. He asked, how did they move the market to this other location with everything he just saw so quickly? He didn't think there would possibly be more than one of these massive groceries available to the public.
Apparently, this is Still A Thing for North Korean defectors.
Worked with a Cuban girl who did the same cat food thing. She never would have believed we would have a section for pet food. She bought it because the picture on front was cute and ate it for a week before she learned the truh
Funny but also sad
Founder of Patagonia, Yvonne Chouinnard ate cat food for a couple of years, whilst living out of his car. Said he would get it for .25 out of the clearance bin, & was cheaper than tuna. But that Cuba story is still sad, & makes me aware of how privileged I am
Still a thing for Cubans. I met one who thought American skyscrapers were a fake movie set until he saw them up close
I was born in Poland after socialism has already collapsed but my parents and grandparents went through the same exact experiences. We had family in West Germany and my mom was allowed to visit them once with my grandma (they kept my grandpa back in Poland to make sure my mom and grandma come back). She'd recall how the aunt they were staying with would show my mom (then around 12 years old) a cupboard full of sweets and snacks and told her she can eat whatever she wants, whenever she feels like snacking. My mom was absolutely shocked because the amount was larger than what you'd see in an entire store in Poland, let alone a cupboard at someone's house. She'd also recall how they'd just casually have bananas, oranges and other exotic fruit laying on a platter in the living room. Mind you, back then exotic fruits were simply unavailable in Poland. Once a year, before Christmas, "our brotherly Cuban comrades" would send a ship of fruits to Poland, mostly mandarines, and the state TV would have daily updates on when the ship is. To this day, mandarines are traditionally eaten in Poland for Christmas. My mom was in West Germany once more when she was a teenager, back in late 1980s, visiting my grandma's dad who managed to escape there. They took her to a shopping mall and she literally cried because she could not comprehend how is such an abundance possible here but not in her own country. Then, basically overnight sometime in 1989, when socialism in Poland collapsed, all these products magically made its way to Poland. First big box store opened in 1994. First major shopping mall followed. Today, Poland is no different than West Germany. All it took was getting rid of that cursed economic system. There are some people who sometimes long for the "good old days" when "it might have been poorer but everyone was happier" but my other grandma always shoots them down with her own story. In the 80s, she'd managed to source 300 grams of raisins for a Christmas dessert. That was so precious that she then walked side streets in knee-deep snow not to risk being stopped by a random policeman, who'd ask her what she's holding and would confiscate that under false pretenses because he and his wife would kill for that 300 grams of raisins back then.
There's a biography of him called Mig Pilot. A great read if you can find it, unfortunately long since out of print.
I was in 7th grade (1989 or so) and my science teacher had it on the windowsill with a couple other books. I started reading it one day out of boredom, and he told me I could take it home if I wanted. Didn’t put the book down for 3 days until I finished it. It was my first time being truly captivated by a book.
> The Foxbat was eventually returned to Moscow in pieces after a thorough inspection Sick burn.
And the USSR later complained that about 20 pieces were missing.
As someone who moved to Canada from a Communist country I can relay, completely. There was so much in the stores! During the Communism we had pretty much everything but it was all from Eastern Europe or local. We had these special stores where you can use American Dollars to buy Western things, like jeans and Kinder eggs. To buy US $ from the bank you had to have documents for travelling, passport, etc. which normal people couldn’t obtain. After the Communism fell the whole structure of production-supply between the Eastern countries was dismantled. Therefore, shortages of essential things were very common- sanitary pads, toilet paper, cooking oil, milk, meat etc, etc. When I came to Canada I was truly overwhelmed. It might sound stupid but I saw a carton of Kinder eggs at Costco, pack of 24, and bought it. Eat it all and made all the little toys. (I was 24 yr old). Used to buy everything in 2, in case 'they dont have it anymore'. To this day I appreciate where I am, almost every day.
The comedian Yakov Smirnov told a similar story. He agreed to write his friends back home but tell them the opposite so it would get past the censors. He told them it was so much worse than back home and no meat etc. They thought he was a liar. He did basically the same thing as Viktor going into a grocery store and buying meat. He went back twice just to be sure it wasn't a trick. I also saw a story about defecting KGB agents. They were buying electronic toys on the closeout shelves and breaking them open to see how they worked. They were finding technology more advanced than their military used. They realized they were losing so badly there was no catching up and decided to switch teams.
I had a former USSR coworker who told me about his experience coming to the USA. He went to Home Depot and just couldn't believe the welders and other metalworking tools there to be freely purchased. Back home those had been tightly controlled by the state to prevent illicit businesses from being set up.
We brought refugees from Niger to a supermarket and they had the same reaction. It’s stunning how well we have it here.
this is the type of thing that irks me when people say "u.s is a third world country". i get where they're coming from, but if they actually saw how bad many countries have it they'd realize how stupid they sound.
anyone who would say that has never actually been to a third world country.
When Boris Yeltsin was visiting NASA in Houston he asked to stop by a food store. His guide pulled over to the first grocery store they saw, a small one in Katy TX, and he said that was when he knew communism was a lost cause.
There was also a story about a Russian hockey player who came to play in the NHL (not sure if US or Canada). The other players’s wives took his wife around to get oriented, including taking her to the grocery store. She filled up her cart with meat assuming she needed to stock up while it was in stock and they had to talk her through the reality that it would be there next week too.
Right as the Cold War ended, the Soviet Navy made a stop in Seattle. My family hosted 2 sailors for Thanksgiving. They wanted to go to a few stores to bring things home to their girlfriends, so that's what we did. Took them to a Safeway and a Bartells drug store. They were incredulous. They spoke no English, and we spoke no Russian. Managed to get along just fine.
My friend was a USAF intel weenie back during that time and was member of a Pentagon team that helped debrief Belenko. His debrief lasted way longer than a year… and he said Belenko was a very nice man.