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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
Soviet people traded the USSR for Coca-Cola. And they did the right thing
2024-02-22
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Alexander Vasiliev
Chief editor of IA Regnum

[REGNUM] Like all normal people, Tucker Carlson does not eat McDonald's products unless absolutely necessary. But extreme need happened.

It is necessary to somehow explain in a very accessible way to the mass American citizen that his country is sliding into the abyss of a world nuclear war. The most popular US politician, Donald Trump, has repeatedly stated about the inevitability of an apocalyptic outcome (if the confrontation with Russia is not stopped).

To try to save his country (and at the same time the whole world), the most popular US television journalist and Trump ally had to eat a burger. And do it in snowy (as it should be) Moscow. A Moscow burger from public catering with a name that was strange even to the Russian ear turned out to be no worse than an American burger. Potatoes, grown, according to Carlson, in the famous potato expanses of Siberia, turned out to be no worse. Carlson reported all this in a specially filmed video.

However, the tasting of the cola he bought was not included in the video and remained without comment.

Skeptics will probably say that this is because the domestically produced drink cannot be compared with the original. At least some Muscovites, who carefully preserve Soviet consumer traditions, buy “real” Coca-Cola secondhand in oriental sweets shops, winking conspiratorially at the colorful Asian merchants.

I can’t even imagine what Trump would say if Carlson brought him from Moscow a red bottle made not even in Iran, but directly in Afghanistan, ruled by the Taliban - an organization, by the way, recognized as terrorist in the Russian Federation. But in Moscow you can buy something like this.

After tasting the Russian burger, Tucker indulged in family memories. It turns out that his father was present at the opening of the first Moscow McDonald's on Pushkinskaya Square.

“My father was there,” Carlson said. "He worked in the US government and came to Russia... I remember this time well, I was in college. It was considered a triumph of the West over the East."

This was a triumph. At the American fast food restaurant, Soviet people formed a line that rivaled in length the line at Lenin's Mausoleum.

In patriotic journalism, it is customary to blame the perestroika gloom of fellow citizens - they traded a great power for cola, hamburger and chewing gum with jeans. Let us leave aside how humiliating this accusation sounds for the power itself. Let the dead bury their dead.

Let's say from today: they exchanged such a “power” for Coca-Cola and did the right thing.

Late Soviet artists had a separate genre - our man is there. Abroad. A classic example is Albert Levin’s monologue “Francois” performed by Vladimir Vinokur. A Soviet worker “to exchange experience” comes to France and shares his impressions:

“You’re also not a master at Francois’s farm. I was in your store opposite your house. Still, there are delicacies: processed cheese, liver sausage and stewed meat. And most importantly, there is no queue! Why aren't you dialing? Oh, and you also have 80 types of beer? And we have only one - diluted “Zhigulevskoe ”...” And so on.

The author of the text, by the way, moved to New York in the mid-1990s, where there is processed cheese, liver sausage and 80 types of beer without a queue.

And now an American goes to a French supermarket in Moscow, films the abundance of cheeses, sausages and beer on the shelves and, leaving with a cart full of groceries, declares: “A visit to a Russian grocery hypermarket and an opportunity to take a look at what prices are here and how people live.”, radicalizes you against our leadership. At least that’s what I felt – radicalization.”

Do you hear that, right? An American becomes radicalized against his government by stopping for processed cheese, liverwurst and beer at the first Moscow supermarket he comes across. What is this if not a triumph over the West?

Of course, we must not fall into pride and think that victory in the historical confrontation is in our pocket by birth. Like, we are Russian and we are lucky. God opposes the proud.

Yes, we can suffer defeat on the battlefield, as we suffered it from the Mongols in the steppes near Kalki-Kalmius, and leave Sevastopol, as we did in 1855 or 1942. Our elites may waver and be seduced, as in February 1917. Even our people, even though they have had their share of troubles, as in October 1917, can become exhausted from hardships and believe foreign agents who, instead of these hardships, promised a quick and simple kingdom of God on earth. All this, alas, cannot be completely ruled out, if only to keep oneself in good shape.

There's one thing we won't do again - we won't sell our birthright for cola, liverwurst and lentil stew.

History tells us that if Russians really want something, they will get it. “And we won’t stand behind the price.”

A huge continental power with no access to a warm sea suddenly wanted to build a fleet. And she built it, cutting windows into all the desired water areas. She wanted to turn the steppe, which had been scorched by the sun for thousands of years, into a granary, forge and health resort. And she populated and improved Novorossiya. Devastated by a war unprecedented in the history of mankind, she decided to get ahead of the richest people on the planet on the way to cosmic infinity. At least for six months, at least for a month. And she got ahead.

The creation of a consumer economy in Russia was the same historical challenge, which Russians took seriously, young and old. And they did it.

The Soviet sphere of service and trade was not even zero, a negative value. It was an icy abyss, an airless space. Something between the swamps on which St. Petersburg was built, the Wild Field, which was turned into Novorossiya, and the near-Earth orbit populated by our satellites and orbital stations.

And on the day when Russia stood up against the West, putting its future on the line, when the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet sank to the bottom, and the troops experienced problems with space communications and reconnaissance, our service and trade sphere became that clamp, that steel hook on which we can lean on and stand up to our full height.

Carlson flew away. But the supermarket remained. Fast food is here to stay. The shopping mall remains. Fitness center remains. And as long as these pillars of the consumer economy stand from the shocked Kremlin to the walls of motionless China, we can be sure: no donkey loaded with hamburgers will defeat our fortress Russia.
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Posted by:badanov

#13  From Billy Wilder's movie "One, Two, Three"

We first saw that when we were living in Germany in the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall.

“Schwanger is pregnant!”
Posted by: trailing wife   2024-02-22 23:39  

#12  #10 #1, are your sure that Timken bearing was not Made in China?

The Russian ones are probably made by the Chinese, American ones made by Mexican workers, shipped by Maersk ships of Denmark and bombed by the Yemenis.
Posted by: Shoth Gratch3103   2024-02-22 16:37  

#11   #5, didn't they ever hear of WD-40?

As Dad used to say, "Don't force it. Use a bigger hammer!"
Posted by: SteveS   2024-02-22 12:26  

#10   #1, are your sure that Timken bearing was not Made in China?
Posted by: Abu Uluque   2024-02-22 12:04  

#9   #5, didn't they ever hear of WD-40?
Posted by: Abu Uluque   2024-02-22 12:01  

#8  From Billy Wilder's movie "One, Two, Three"


Peripetchikoff : No formula, NO DEAL!

C.R. MacNamara : OK, NO DEAL!

Borodenko : We do not need you! If we want Coca-cola, we invent it ourselves!

C.R. MacNamara : Oh, yeah? In 1956 you flew a bottle of Coke to a secret laboratory in Sverdlosk. A dozen of your top chemists went nuts trying to analyze the ingredients. Right?

Mishkin : No comment!

C.R. MacNamara : And in 1958, you planted two undercover agents in Atlanta to steal the formula. And what happened? They both defected! And now they're successful businessmen in Florida packaging instant borscht. Right?

Peripetchikoff : No comment!

C.R. MacNamara : Last year you put out a cockamamie imitation "Kremlin-kola!" You tried it out in the satellite countries, but even the Albanians wouldn't drink it. They used it for SHEEP DIP! RIGHT?

Mishkin : No comment!

C.R. MacNamara : So either get down to business or get off the pot!

Peripetchikoff : My dear American friend, if we are to live together in peaceful coexistence, there must be a certain amount of give and take.

C.R. MacNamara : Oh, sure - we give and you take.

Peripetchikoff : What is the matter - you do not trust us?

C.R. MacNamara : No comment!

Peripetchikoff : Well, Comrades, what are we going to do? He's got it - we want it. Are we going to accept this blackmailing capitalist's deal?

Mishkin : Let's take a vote.

Peripetchikoff : I vote yes.

Mishkin : I vote yes.

Peripetchikoff : Two out of three. Deal is on!

Borodenko : Comrades, before you get in trouble, I must warn you, I am not really from Soft Drink Secretariat. I am undercover agent assigned to watch you.

Mishkin : In that case I vote no. Deal is off.

Borodenko : But I vote yes!

Peripetchikoff : Two out of three again! Deal is on!
Posted by: European Conservative   2024-02-22 07:35  

#7  ^^OK,OK, breeds.
אנגלית שפה קשה
Posted by: Grom the Reflective   2024-02-22 02:30  

#6  ^familiarity bread contempt.
Posted by: Grom the Reflective   2024-02-22 02:29  

#5  Typically , artillery rockets are electrically fired, but still...

Posted by: badanov   2024-02-22 02:21  

#4  Great flick!
Posted by: Nero   2024-02-22 01:26  

#3  ^^^. The Russian said his favorite American movie to learn English from was "The Gods Must Be Crazy". A great movie about a remote African tribesman who happened to be under the flight path of a small plan whose occupants tossed a coke bottle out that almost hit the tribesman on the head. He thought it was sent down from the gods. Jealousy over who had possession of the coke bottle almost destroyed the peace and tranquility of the tribe. A great movie. Trailer below:

https://youtu.be/hvgFqdqPIuE?si=FuYAxeBek3ap14JG
Posted by: Angealing B. Hayes4677   2024-02-22 01:00  

#2  My first Czech au pair girl learnt English from her university computer programming classes in the last years before before the fall of the Berlin Wall. My last au pair girl, the only one who was Polish, learnt hers watching “Beverly Hills, 90210” and Pretty Women. The two in the middle got their English from proper classes, then came to me for fluency and polish. Wonderful, thoughtful girls, all four of them.
Posted by: trailing wife   2024-02-22 00:43  

#1  Many people want to get out of Russia two years into the war. A Russian YouTube put out a video yesterday of him looking for a wheel bearing for his truck. He searched and searched for an American made wheel bearing, eventually finding an American Timken bearing. He bought a Russian bearing as a backup but showed how inferior the Russian one was compared to the Timken. He said he dreams of taking his family out of Russia if he ever could find a way without getting arrested. Until then he uses an alias on his Youtube channel and does not disclose where he lives in Russia. He learned English watching old American Hollywood movies. He says many Russians are like him.
Posted by: Angealing B. Hayes4677   2024-02-22 00:22  

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