[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWTGsUyv8IE[/youtube]
For most of us, this happened in our lifetime.
My dad used to tell the story of how he was asked to accompany a team of Soviet scientists and military officers to North Dakota to see our missile silos in the aftermath of the signing of one of the anti-ballistic missile treaties. When they landed in whatever big city they started in, the group was taken on a tour of the city to see how people in the USA actually lived, which included a supermarket. He said there was one high ranking Soviet General who was completely blown away by what he saw. He walked through the front door of the market and just stood there for several minutes staring around, almost like he was confused and stunned. Then, he made everyone wait while he walked down every single aisle of the store carefully looking at the products and asking his translator what most of the items were.
Well, after they finally got on their way to the destination of their purpose, he decided he needed to stop in every single town along the way to see the grocery stores. My dad said the trip, which was supposed to just take 6 hours, or so, ultimately took 14 hours because he wanted to see the inside of every grocery store in every town they went through. He later told the state department attache that after seeing the first grocery store he was completely convinced the Americans were attempting to trick him by gathering all the groceries, meat and produce from around the region and putting into the one store the group was meant to tour. So, he wanted to catch the Americans in the trick by unexpectedly forcing them to stop at one of the stores which wasn't specially prepared just for this group. He even suggested that perhaps the Americans were so committed to their ruse that they left thousands of stores empty around the region just to fill up the dozen, or so, stores along the route merely to impress the Russians and make them think their way of society was a failure.
Basically, he was admitting the communist system was a failure by insisting that mostly empty grocery stores was common everywhere and that there was nothing different between US and Soviet stores. The attache told my father the Soviet general either left in complete denial, thinking the Americans spent a fortune moving groceries into the stores on their route, or else he was forced to accept the fact that the American society and commerce system was vastly superior to the communist system he had spent his life fighting for.
For most of us, this happened in our lifetime.
My dad used to tell the story of how he was asked to accompany a team of Soviet scientists and military officers to North Dakota to see our missile silos in the aftermath of the signing of one of the anti-ballistic missile treaties. When they landed in whatever big city they started in, the group was taken on a tour of the city to see how people in the USA actually lived, which included a supermarket. He said there was one high ranking Soviet General who was completely blown away by what he saw. He walked through the front door of the market and just stood there for several minutes staring around, almost like he was confused and stunned. Then, he made everyone wait while he walked down every single aisle of the store carefully looking at the products and asking his translator what most of the items were.
Well, after they finally got on their way to the destination of their purpose, he decided he needed to stop in every single town along the way to see the grocery stores. My dad said the trip, which was supposed to just take 6 hours, or so, ultimately took 14 hours because he wanted to see the inside of every grocery store in every town they went through. He later told the state department attache that after seeing the first grocery store he was completely convinced the Americans were attempting to trick him by gathering all the groceries, meat and produce from around the region and putting into the one store the group was meant to tour. So, he wanted to catch the Americans in the trick by unexpectedly forcing them to stop at one of the stores which wasn't specially prepared just for this group. He even suggested that perhaps the Americans were so committed to their ruse that they left thousands of stores empty around the region just to fill up the dozen, or so, stores along the route merely to impress the Russians and make them think their way of society was a failure.
Basically, he was admitting the communist system was a failure by insisting that mostly empty grocery stores was common everywhere and that there was nothing different between US and Soviet stores. The attache told my father the Soviet general either left in complete denial, thinking the Americans spent a fortune moving groceries into the stores on their route, or else he was forced to accept the fact that the American society and commerce system was vastly superior to the communist system he had spent his life fighting for.
