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

Boris Yeltsin's visit to a suburban Houston supermarket in 1989 (2016)
beelineblogger.blogspot.com

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-the-supermarket-helped-...

I went on a student tour of the USSR as a college student in 1991, arranged through my University (U of Alabama). I was getting a minor in Russian language, and it seemed like a fun trip. It actually got MORE fun because in the run-up to the trip (in spring, 91) there was some dissent in the USSR and many parents wouldn't let their kids go. In order to create a large enough trip, the University opened registration up to university-area retirees, so we ended up with a cohort of probably 30 folks. Half of us were under 25, and the other half over 65. It was the first time I'd ever really hung out with older people who weren't relatives, and that's really something we don't do enough of. Listen, if you have a chance to drink with WWII Hellcat pilots, do it.

Anyway.

Back then, you took certain American commodities with you to trade -- Levi's, Marlboros, etc. We met a pair of enterprising young black marketeers -- our age -- in Moscow, and hit off so well with them that they met us in (what was then) Leningrad for our last port of call. It was very cool, trying to converse in broken Russian and English, and generally being over the moon to have "friends" from the other side of the Cold War that defined both our countries up to then.

It went so well with Andrei and Volodya that, somehow, they finagled visas, and the next fall came to Tuscaloosa to visit us. Andrei immediately took up with my girlfriend's pal, but Volodya was shyer and stayed with Cassie and I for several weeks. And during that time -- and this would've been fall 91 into winter 92 -- obviously we did some shopping.

I remember vividly taking Volodya to the local supermarket, where we bought the sorts of cheap things students buy. Except obviously our budgets as upper-middle-class college kids allowed us things absurdly beyond the reach of anybody Volodya knew in Moscow -- like fresh fruit and vegetables in January. He was stunned, and we were kind of shamed by the plenty we had access to.

Then he saw the bananas. He really wanted bananas. He wouldn't ask for bananas. So I grabbed a bunch and put them in the basket.

"Are you rich?" No. I have a good student job. "Are your parents in government?" No. My dad's dead; Cassie's dad is a doctor in another state. "Anyone can shop here?" Absolutely.

I don't pretend for a moment the US was then, or is now, some kind of paradise. We fail our poor in material and constant ways. But those moments in the Bruno's with Volodya are something I'll never forget.