Later, when Boris Yeltsin made an unscheduled stop at a Randalls supermarket in Houston, Texas, during a tour of the Johnson Space Center in 1989, the experience was even more profound. “When I saw those shelves crammed with hundreds, thousands of cans, cartons and goods of every possible sort, I felt quite frankly sick with despair for the Soviet people.” He told his advisors that if the Russian people ever saw this, “there would be a revolution.” The raw shock in these remarks underscores the very real way that grocery—along with the World War II spending boom, unions, and the G.I. Bill—was
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