I think my comment may have been confusing. The "Soviet experience" was well understood in 1989 (see the clip of the 1984 movie I posted). Only weeks away from Yeltsin's jaunt to the supermarket was the collapse of the Berlin Wall, a true harbinger of the demise of the USSR. Had Yeltsin visited a dreary American DMV, rather than a bountiful supermarket, nothing would have changed.