In 1989, Boris Yeltsin was on a diplomatic visit to Texas. He wanted to see every day American life so he asked to stop at at a grocery store. The soviets of course would have prepared a potemkin village for such a visit, and he suspected Americans might try the same thing, so he specifically wanted to arrive unannounced at a random unprepared grocery store. He was absolutely shocked at the abundance and variety available in a random small town grocery store. This experience undermined his faith in communism and he later became the first president of post-soviet Russia.
This story absolutely mentally booty-blasted every soviet on the planet. An entire generation of embarrassment that they've been fighting shower arguments against ever since. 35 years of cope and seethe. They just can't get over it.
In 1989, Boris Yeltsin was on a diplomatic visit to Texas. He wanted to see every day American life so he asked to stop at at a grocery store. The soviets of course would have prepared a potemkin village for such a visit, and he suspected Americans might try the same thing, so he specifically wanted to arrive unannounced at a random unprepared grocery store. He was absolutely shocked at the abundance and variety available in a random small town grocery store. This experience undermined his faith in communism and he later became the first president of post-soviet Russia.
This story absolutely mentally booty-blasted every soviet on the planet. An entire generation of embarrassment that they've been fighting shower arguments against ever since. 35 years of cope and seethe. They just can't get over it.