DEAR COMRADES!

It's kind of mind boggling just how inept the Soviet Union was at the simplest things.  They couldn't grow and transport enough food to feed their own people, despite having more than enough farmland to handle the task.  Lack of food was a perpetual problem from what I understand.  

I remember once reading an article about when Boris Yeltsin visited the US in the late 80's.  He was taken to a local grocery store and was dumbfounded by the sheer volume of not only food, but varieties of food that were readily available, indicating that not even the most wealthy and powerful of Russia had such access at any price.  His initial response was that the entire store had been staged for his benefit, rather than being the norm.  The person giving away free samples seemed particularly ludicrous.  

There was one time when a Russian delegation came to D/FW for a tour of several places.  One of them was Saginaw, TX which at the time had the largest grain processing facility in the world.  Another place they went to was a store I go to regularly called Town Talk, which is a surplus store.  Apparently, the interpreters had a difficult time conveying what the term "surplus" meant to them.  The very idea that a large store could be dedicated to extra food and other goods that typical stores wanted to simply get rid of was just too much.