Bernie Sanders' Soviet Honeymoon

http://www.terrellaftermath.com/

What Bernie Sanders Missed on His Soviet Honeymoon

"This is the true face of the Cuban Revolution, one that an all-too-gullible Bernie Sanders didn’t seem interested in seeing."

"Bernie Sanders and I have little in common, given his passionate commitment to “democratic” socialism and my firm belief in individual freedom. But we do share one thing: We both visited Moscow in 1988, albeit for differing reasons. 

"Sanders was on what he called “a very strange honeymoon” with his bride Jane. I was traveling in the Soviet Union with a delegation of Western journalists and opinion leaders.  

"According to The Washington Post, Sanders, then 46, had a wonderful time combining business and pleasure as the socialist mayor of Burlington, Vermont, met “ordinary people” from everyday walks of life (carefully selected by the Communist Party, you may be sure).

"He walked through Red Square and saw Lenin’s tomb, visited Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), and took a boat ride down the Volga River. He traveled to Yaroslavl — Burlington’s “sister city” — where he toured factories, hospitals, and schools, all spruced up for the American visitors like a 20th-century Potemkin village.

"Although visiting for only 10 days, Sanders found things that he liked, including the housing, which cost only 5% of a Russian’s income instead of the 40% in the United States. He was obviously unable to visit, as I did, a cramped Moscow apartment of two small rooms occupied by a family of five." . . .

A Soviet-era apartment block in Moscow’s Presnensky District.

. . . "What else did Sanders miss on his honeymoon in Moscow?

"A visit to GUM, the gigantic department store fronting Red Square. When I visited, I saw desperate shoppers roaming the aisles like hungry wolves looking for hats, gloves, and coats. Dozens of women lined up to buy a pair of boots, which, if they didn’t fit, they would exchange with one other on the sidewalk.

"Clearly, Sanders did not have the opportunity, as I did, to visit an official government “grocery” store empty of goods, save for dozens of unlabeled cans ignored by shoppers and a few withered yellowish chickens that even a starving man would have rejected.

"Back in Vermont, reported The Washington Post, Sanders held a news conference in which he eulogized Soviet housing and health care and openly criticized America. But he left out the systematic Soviet repression of courageous dissidents like Natan Sharansky, who might still be in the gulag if President Ronald Reagan hadn’t determined to end the Cold War by winning it." . . .