Seeing New York City’s mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani talk about city-run grocery stores reminds me of the famous supermarket visit by another communist in 1989. I shouldn’t fault Mamdani for not remembering it, he wasn’t even born yet.
In 1989 the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet, Boris Yeltsin visited America. While in Houston, Texas to tour the Johnson Space Center, Yeltsin’s motorcade made an unexpected stop at a grocery store. The entourage of Russians marveled at the sight of fully stocked shelves, an abundance of choices, fresh bread, fruits and vegetables. Yeltsin told a reporter that day the sight made him “sick with despair for my countrymen.” Communist grocery stores were without variety, scarce of goods and customers waited in long lines just to get stale bread and sour milk.
This was a pivotal moment for Yeltsin and reinforced his belief that the communist system was a failure. Yelstin saw the light. He left Russian’s communist party in 1990 and become a leading advocate for democratic, free-market policies and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. He became president of Russia a year later and in 1992 on another tour of the United States, that’s when I met President Yeltsin.
During a tour of Wichita, Kansas, Yeltsin made his was to the Hormel plant, where he and his entourage marveled at the machinery pumping out meat products, wanting the same for their country’s meat packing operations, and when they came across a stash of Spam, well the Russian president was so happy he gave his suit jacket to an assembly line worker, followed by a big hug. You see, the former communist had never seen Spam – highly valued in Russia — in such quantities. As a radio reporter back then, I witnessed, Yeltsin grabbing two cases of spam, and carrying them out like suitcases to his motorcade. Each member of the Russian delegation did the same.
I think by then the free market system led by Yelstin was being challenged by the evil forces of communism. By the late 1990s Vladimir Putin was just coming into power, eventually leading Russia back to full-blown communism a few years later. And that’s what may face New Yorkers. Once the communist system is in place, it may never leave.
