Sep

16

Happy Yeltsin Supermarket Day

September 16, 2025 |

Happy Yeltsin Supermarket Day

Thirty-five years ago today, Boris Yeltsin, then a newly elected member of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, visited NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, where he toured the US government facility and the various technologies therein. But it was a brief, impromptu visit to a nearby grocery store that may well have changed world history.

Yeltsin, who’d two years later become the first freely elected leader of Russia, roamed the aisles of the relatively small Randall’s market that day and was astonished at the variety and affordability of the products on display. According to various reports, this visit — not the one to NASA — catalyzed Yeltsin’s exit from the Communist Party and his abandonment of the Soviet economic model.

Stefan Jovanovich comments:

The supermarket is innocent.

When Yeltsin visited the Johnson Space Center in September, it was two months after he had announced Soviet withdrawals of its Red Army garrisons from East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia. Boris Yeltsin was first elected to office in the Soviet Union on March 26, 1989, as a deputy to the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union, representing Moscow’s 1st District. He won 89.6% of the vote (5,118,745 votes) in a multi-candidate election, defeating Yevgeny Brakov, a pro-CPSU candidate. The CPD was the equivalent of what the members of the more numerous branches of the State legislatures were in the 19th century; they elected members of the Supreme Soviet just as American State legislatures elected members of the U.S. Senate. He became the first President of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) on May 29, 1990. The CPSU’s assets were seized, and its activities were suspended. A successor party, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), was formed on February 14, 1993, led by Gennady Zyuganov. The CPRF is an active political party in Russia, participating in elections and holding seats in the State Duma. As of the September 8, 2024, regional elections, the CPRF holds 57 seats in the State Duma (out of 450).


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