Welcome to Randall's, a run of the mill supermarket in Texas.

The year is nineteen eighty nine, and this.

Randall's, in a Houston strip mall, is like thousands of other chain grocery stores across America.

There's an in house bakery that makes bad bagels and good donuts, a meat counter, seafood dairy, and of course, a produce section.

There's quite a selection.

Alongside Texas grown peaches and peppers, are potatoes from Idaho, avocados from Mexico, and bananas from South America.

Stacks of lettuce and rows of upright celery glisten with beads of water.

There are six types of apples, three kinds of grapes, and tomatoes in every shape and size.

That's what American shoppers expect when they walk into a grocery store, and that was true in nineteen eighty nine.

But imagine for a minute that you've never seen an American grocery store before.

Imagine that you've grown up in the Soviet Union, behind the proverbial iron curtain, where food shopping means lines, really long lines for just about everything.

In Soviet grocery stores, there is only one type of flour one type of milk, and for most people, bananas only exist in movies.

Imagine, for the sake of today's story, that you are Boris Yeltsin.

You remember Boris Yeltsin, right, the Soviet politician who became a joke on late night TV after a few too many vodka induced pratfalls.

What you might not remember is that Yeltsin was once a brash, young politician.

He pushed for radical reforms in the former Soviet Union.

And what you almost certainly don't know is that in nineteen eighty nine, while on a tour of the United States, Boris Yeltsen made an unscheduled visit to a random Randall's grocery that left him a profoundly changed man.

In fact, you.

Could argue the collapse of the Soviet Union began when Boris Yeltsin encountered a freezer case full of jell O pudding pops.

After everything the United States had done to try and win the Cold War, is that what broke Communism?

A nuclear arms race, proxy wars, CIA incursions, CIA assassination, attempts, infiltration, diplomacy, the deatonte star wars.

I mean trillions and trillions of dollars spent, and in the end, it was a Russian who came to a grocery store and said, Holy moly, they have pudding pops.

We're done.

That's it.

It's over.

Welcome to very special episodes and I heeart original podcast.

I'm your host, Danash Schwartz, and this is the grocery store that killed Communism.

Welcome back Very Special episodes.

Cheese Dana.

He's Aaron.

I'm Jason as, a history lover and a former cashier and Tuesday night front end manager at the A and P grocery store in Denville, New Jersey.

Like this was tailor made for me.

I have to say it's probably our favorite episode of the season.

And I don't know if Yeltson would have had the similar religious experience at our A and P.

It was pretty nice.

But there's a reason it's no longer in business rip A and P.

But we pack a lot into this one.

Mm hm, cold War history, grocery stores, Texas, Texas Operas, little musical theater.

It kind of hits everything.

I love food, history, musical theater exactly.

And I don't know about you go.

I have a Boris Yeltson guarantee.

It's very simple.

If there's any story with Boris Yeltson, I will read it or listen to it, because he's just such a crazy world figure of history.

Like back in the day, my friends and I, we used to have a deadpool that was the Pope, Hope or Boris Yeltson.

We'd try to which one of them would be the last to live.

We couldn't believe it ourselves, but Boris Yeltson won.

He outlived Bob Hope and the Pope.

So there you go.

To understand how a grocery store in Texas could change the course of history, you have to understand what life was like in the Soviet Union in the late nineteen eighties chunks of the twentieth century.

The Soviet economy kept pace with the United States.

They were the two global superpowers.

In America, we had free market capitalism fueled by private business ownership and fierce competition.

In the Soviet Union, they had something called a command economy.

Basically, every aspect.

Of the economy was dictated by production goals handed down from a central communist authority.

From the outside, the Soviet system seemed to work.

Their GDP often outpaced the US, and military spending was through the roof, But those achievements hid the fact that the USSR spent way too much on nuclear bombs and way too little on basic consumer goods.

For decades, Soviet families suffered shortages of food, clothing, household good, good everything.

Yolena Biberman grew up in Belarus, which was at the time a Soviet satellite state in eastern Europe.

Elena was eleven in nineteen eighty nine, part of the last generation who could remember what life was really like in the USSR, right before it all came tumbling down.

We asked her about breadlines, but Elena says, bread was just the tip of the iceberg.

Oh man, Yes, so lines, lots of lines.

Let's say you walking on the street, you see a line, you immediately join.

You don't know what it's for, but if it's a line, it means it's something good.

And eventually it takes time, but you ask around and you figure out what it is, and as time progressed, increasingly was more likely to be something edible food.

It wasn't all bad, Elena says, So I.

Remember very vividly there was a line, and I stood in it, and I waited and waited and waited, and at the end of it, I got like a little haste tree, and it was so warm and delicious.

It was worth it.

I still remember it to hear Yolena tell it.

The Soviet Union of her childhood wasn't the colorless concrete wasteland Americans sometimes picture.

For example, she went to the movies every week in these ornate movie palaces.

New Year's Eve was celebrated like Christmas, with a sparkling tree, gifts, and fireworks.

Elina's town even had a public seltzer dispenser with different flavors, like a free soda fountain.

Everyone drank from the same shared glass that they washed out with a quick swirl of water.

There's a small town, so I guess these same germs kept going around, and you know, we were immune.

But in the background of Elena's childhood memories was the constant, low grade hum of hunger.

Both of her parents worked, but the family never had enough to eat.

I remember not having food at home, and so I found myself really hungry, and thank god, there was always bread in the stores.

I would always be able to go to the store and buy bread, and I would just eat bread, and then sometimes I would add salt to it, so I would eat bread and salt.

And had it not been for the bread, I don't know what I would have done and what other people around me would have done, because then it's sort of like there's nothing.

When things got even worse for Elena and her family, they immigrated to the United States.

Elina will never forget her first trip to an American grocery store.

So my aunt is the one who kind of organized this for us.

She came to you as before us and then she was like, okay, you're ready.

She knew it would be an emotional experience and very overwhelming, so she waited a few days before taking us to a supermarket.

Then I remember seeing.

A cart that would be cards and already confused, like what and they were giant and like, first of all, while they're helping you shop, because in this Union it was like the opposite that like, please don't buy so much.

Here in the US, it's like, please buy as much as you can.

So already like it was like wow, But the most important was bananas.

Oh my god, that was the holy grail.

Sometimes my mother says, the reason why we left the Soviet Union was that so my kids could eat bananas.

Yolena had no idea such a place existed in America.

For decades, the communist leadership told people the Soviet Union was the envy of the world.

American style capitalism oppressed the worker and enriched the elites.

America was the land of hunger.

Only the Soviet system looked out for everyone.

That story is hard to swallow if you're having bread and salt sandwiches every night for dinner.

As shortages dragged on, the Soviet people became increasingly rescue.

That's why politicians like Mikhail Gorbachev introduced reform programs in the nineteen eighties like Glasnost and Perestoika.

Glasnost promised greater openness and transparency in Soviet politics, and Perestroika was supposed to restructure the stagnant Soviet economy, But some Soviet politicians thought Gorbachev's reforms were too slow and didn't go nearly far enough.

Boris Yeltsen was one of the loudest voices calling for radical change.

Yeltsen was an outsider politician who knew something about hunger.

He was born in nineteen thirty one in a remote village in the Ural Mountains.

Yeltsin's grandfather lost his land when farming was collectivized under Stalin in the nineteen forties.

Yeltsin's father was assigned to work in a put factory.

The family lived in a communal hut for ten years.

In his autobiography, Yeltsin remembers having no warm clothes, so in the winter, the children huddled up next to a nannygoat.

The goat's milk also got them through World War II.

Yelton never forgot his humble beginnings.

Even after he became a Communist party official, he remained a quote man of the people.

He'd make unannounced visits to factories and shops and schools and ask people about.

Their daily lives.

When he saw faults in the system, he called them out.

One of Yeltsin's first actions as Party chief of Moscow was to declare war on bribery and corruption.

He fired two thirds of the Moscow party bosses.

He closed down stores where senior party officials secretly bought items not available to the general public, like fresh fruits and vegetables.

If there were shortages, he said everyone should experience them equally.

Under Gorbachev, Yelton rose all the way to the polit Bureau, this central committee of the Communist Party, but Yeltin grew frustrated with the slow pace of change and openly criticized party leadership, including Gorbachev.

In nineteen eighty seven, Yelton was ousted from the pulit Bureau, and his enemies tried to paint him as a drunken.

Ox, a fool.

This could have been the end of Yelton's political career, but instead he found his voice as an anti Communist crusader and underdog.

Yelena says that after the Chernobyl disaster, there was real anger that the government had covered up the extent of the danger.

We wanted new people in charge who were really sick of the old leadership of the journaltocracy that has over time been disconnected from reality and its people.

The Chernobyl accident and I was sort of in the middle of where the cloud ended up going from there, the radiation it really hit my town and after we found out it took a while, but once we found out, people were so disappointed and there was a sense like this is it, like we need new people in charge.

And this is why people were excited about somebody like Yitzen because he seemed different, new generation, not afraid to say thanks, to speak his mind.

In nineteen eighty nine, the Soviet Union held its first democratic elections for a new governing body called the Congress of People's Deputies.

Yelton ran as a delegate from Moscow and won in a landslide.

He saw victory as a mandate for change and formed a radical reform party to challenge the Communists.

Yeltsin was now the most famous and powerful pro democracy the advocate in the Soviet Union, but he faced tremendous opposition from hardliners on the Politburo and Ivan Gorbachev.

In September of nineteen eighty nine, Boris Yeltsen was invited to take a tour of the United States.

American politicians were curious about this outspoken Soviet rabble rouser, and Yeltsin, who had never been to America before, was eager to see democracy in action.

The Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs reluctantly granted Yeltsin a visa if the Communist party leadership had known what was going to happen to Yeltsin in America and how it was going to change Soviet history.

They never would have let him go.

Evan Mack is a musician and composer.

He writes operas and musicals for a living, which is pretty cool.

Until a few years ago, the name Boris Yeltsin meant very little to Evan.

Yeah, he was the big drunkey on TV all the time in my childhood.

But then a Texas arts organization commissioned an original opera set in the lone Star State.

While googling little known events from Texas history, Evan stumbled across the strange little story of Boris Yeltsin's visit to a Randall's grocery store in.

Nineteen eighty nine.

Evan knew immediately he had found this subject for his new opera, but he had a lot of research to do.

What was going on in the Soviet Union in nineteen eighty nine and what was Yeltsin's role?

To me, it seems like it was end stage Bolshevism, You know, this sense of things are not working.

No one really knows the solution, but things had to change.

He was quite charismatic, you know he was.

He was a volleyball player.

He played the spoons like it was just like that was his instrument, you know.

So there was this this sort of everyman quality about him.

Reading through old news stories, Evan learned that Yeltsin's trip to the United States was a fact finding mission of sorts.

Just like in his Moscow days, Yeltsin learned best by meeting people face to face.

In September nineteen eighty nine, Yeltsin landed at JFK Airport in New York and set out to meet America.

It wasn't very exciting at first.

And in New York they showed him three things.

They showed him the Statue of Liberty, the un and Trump Tower.

No one knows why those were the three things in nineteen eighty nine to show him, but they showed him that.

He was not impressed.

The next stop, Baltimore, was a minor disaster.

Unable to sleep from jet lag, Yeltsin down two sleeping pills with a couple shots of whiskey.

At an early morning speech the next day, he was quote visibly intoxicated, according to The New York Times.

In Washington, d C President H.

W.

Bush passed on a one on one meeting with Yeltsin, afraid it would insult Gorbachev, Yeltsin's frenemy.

Yeltsin's consolation prize was a meeting with Vice President Dan Quayle in Philadelphia.

Yeltsin was shown the Liberty Bell.

In Indiana, he was taken to a pig farm.

Yeltson joked, Generally, I prefer to see Americans, but I guess pigs will do.

In Texas, Yeltsin gave a speech at a Dallas press club that would have gotten him shot under Stalin or at least thrown in a Siberian gulog.

Yeltson said that for too many years, Soviet leaders pretended to build socialism while the people pretended to work.

It was, in his words, a society built on lies.

The next day, September sixteenth, he got a tour of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Yeltsen was shown mission control and mockups of a space station called Freedom.

Yeltsen, a former engineer, asked some technical questions, but his mind seemed to be elsewhere.

After the Johnson Space Center, it was off to the Houston Airport, where Yeltsin and his entourage would catch a flight to Miami, the final stop of their US tour.

But as they left for the airport, Yeltsen asked his handlers if there was time to stop at a grocery store.

A grocery store, sure, why not.

They made some calls and found the closest one.

It was a Randall's grocery store about a mile and a half from the Johnson Space Center.

I don't even think it was a flagsh store.

It was just a Randall's grocery store, one of many chains in that area.

The store manager, Paul Jurga, had just a few minutes warning.

He met the busload of Russians in the parking lot, shook hands and welcomed them in.

People were still shopping, There were people curious and walking around.

You know, there was a photographer, but if you look at even some of the pictures, there's.

Not a huge crowd around him.

It's not a mob of people.

You know.

It wasn't like Gorbatchrov showed up.

It wasn't the head of Russia, or it wasn't you know, some celebrity.

It was just a random VIP coming.

We don't know why exactly Yeltsen asked.

To see a grocery store, or what was going through his mind when he first stepped inside Randall's, But if it was anything like the experience of his aid Leve Sukunov, then it was pure sensory overload.

Here's how Suknov described it in his memoir Three Years with Boris Yeltsin.

I was immediately struck by abundance of light, and in general color scheme of everything was so bright and impressive that it felt like Vivre descending into depths of Kalidoscope.

When we walked along rows, our eyes didn't know where to stop.

I could guess different things, but what I saw in this supermarket was no less amazing than America itself.

Some of us started counting the types of hams we.

Lost cult Yeltsen probably had these same thoughts as he wandered, dumbfounded through Randall's, but his amazement was also mixed with suspicion.

As a student of Russian history, Yeltsen knew the story of Prince Gregory Potempkin.

Potempkin was a secret lover of Catherine the Great and Allegedly, he wanted to impressed her with a tour of the recently annexed territory of Crimea.

According to legend, Potempkin built facades of colorfully painted villages along her parade route to hide the unpleasant reality of starving peasants.

Yeltson thought that Randalls was a Potempkin village.

Seeing the store and walking to the grocery store, he immediately thought, oh, this is a setup by the Americans, like let's put on a dog and pony show and this is look at us.

And and they, the Americans were confused because like, wait a minute, what do you.

What do you mean?

Like this is this is a grocery store, Like there's probably a better one down the block.

Then he thought, oh, this is this.

Is where the NASA brass shop, only the upper echelon generals of NASA and the big important people.

And again they were like nope, just one on this corner, as opposed to a mile away from here.

Yeltsin was flabbergasted.

All this was for regular people.

He asked one of the workers, how many college degrees someone has to have to catalog.

Everything and run everything?

And I think one was like I did a semester community college.

Like, there's just so many things that don't line up because it was so vast and so amazing.

Yelton stopped a young woman rolling by with her cart and, while being friendly, quizzed her about her income and how much she spent on groceries each week.

He did the math.

It was expensive, but not crazy.

Middle class Americans were eating like kings.

There's a photo of Yelton looking down at a freezer case full of ice cream.

He has a big smile on his face and his arms are raised as if to say, what a miracle.

The subject of his fascination is a box of Jello pudding pops.

So eighties, but Jello pudding pops.

He couldn't believe that.

I think also because the fact that in the center of an aisle was a freezer, right, a huge long freezer.

They didn't have that.

So to see something and then have this product of you know, Bill Cosby's face on it and Chella pudding pops, you know, that was shocking.

But the real shocker came in the produce section.

Sure there were fruits and vegetables in the Soviet Union.

Some people had gardens in the country and grew their own produce, and in the summer there were markets in the big cities, but the choices were always limited, and there were lines for cabbages.

In America, however, even the humblest grocery store contained a veritable cornicopia.

Here's Sukenov again.

In vegetable section.

Viva letally shocked byquality of produce.

A reddish the size of large potato, was illuminated by bright light and water was scattered onto it from small spirits.

Redishes were literally dazzling, and next to them were onions, garlic, eggplant, cauliflower, tomatos, culcumber.

Yeltsin's grandfather was a farmer.

He had a connection to the earth.

There's nothing more earthy than onions and potatoes.

It's peasant food.

And here in America, Yelton realized even a peasant could eat better than Gorbachev himself.

There was like two things, if you think about it.

One had this sort of shock and awe of colors, the amount of products, the variety of all of those products.

Right, So think cereal aisle, think cookies, think different chips.

Right.

That was one type of commercialism.

The other was radish.

Is the size of potatoes that rocked him at his core, like commercialism is one thing, but abundance is another.

You know, we've been told all of this stuff about the failings of American capitalism, but live and improof.

Yeah, you could argue that the commercialism is a failing.

But not the radish, not the giant onion.

That's irrefutable proof that the system is working.

There was a reporter from the Houston Chronicle who covered Yeltsin's twenty minute visit to Randall's in nineteen eighty nine.

As Eyeltzen stood before.

The piles of shiny apples and crisp lettuce and bright yellow bananas, he turned to her and said, if the Soviet people, who wait in line every day for a meager selection of goods ever saw a US supermarket, there would be a revolution.

The last photograph taken of Boris Yeltsen at Randall's supermarket shows him at the checkout stand.

A teenage clerk who is rocking a sweet eighties perm is explaining how the price scanners work.

Once again, Yeltsin and his team are blown away.

His aide you can have described it.

At the exit from American Supermarket, Girl is seating at cash register didn't have to count anything.

In her hands, she held small device that resembled head dryer, which she quickly ran over price code on the package.

After this operation, price appeared on computer cash register screen.

The customer paid and could freely pass through electronic turnstile to fill what else could be simpler and smarters in such a seastem.

An hour earlier, Yelton was at the Johnson Space Center where NASA officials showed him the plans for a new space station.

He was unfazed the beeping laser checkout thing, a revelation further proof that the Soviet Union was light years behind America.

At the exit, the store manager presented Yelton with a goodie bag for the trip home.

Putting on a brave face, Yelton joked, is this what you give a starving Russian?

You should add some soap?

We need that too.

Outside in the Randalls parking lot, however, something snapped inside Boris Yeltsin.

Sure, Yeltsen talked a big game about changing the system.

He was a loud critic of the Communist Party's leadership and openly called for democratic and capitalist reforms, but he was also a proud son of the Soviet Union and believed deep down in the promises of the Bolshevik Revolution, a system of government that was supposed to put the workers and the common people first.

Somewhere in the Randalls parking lot where Atsukin, of quote, the last vestige of Bolshevism collapsed inside Yeltsin.

When he got into the parking lot, it was sadness on what we've done to our people, and then anger.

Right, if the people saw what I just saw on.

An American grocery store, there'd be a revolution, because it's it's the exact opposite of the Bolshevik revolution, Right.

They were overthrowing the yoke of the czar, and they were, you know, it was going to be equality for everybody.

And did they achieve some of the things, yes, But after you know, of course Stalin and all of the atrocities, it instantly did not have.

You know, you could see very clearly it did not happen.

But he now walks into the enemy's grocery store the day to day and said, this is the ideal of the everyman, that a person can walk in any income.

And he saw them, and he met them and could grab whatever they wanted off the shelf and bring it home to eat or cook, or make or process or microwave.

I don't know, you know, So that's revolutionary in the sense of our abundance is the revolution that they were striving for and never hit.

There's no question that Yeltsin's trip to Randall's affected him deeply.

One of his biographers wrote, for a long time on the plane to Miami, he sat motionless, his head in his hands.

What have they done to our poor people?

I think we have committed a crime against our people by making their standard of living so incomparably lower.

Than that of the Americans.

When Yeltsin were turned to Moscow, he was more committed than ever to tearing down what was clearly a failing system.

The Communist Party could keep telling its lies about the superiority of the Soviet system, but the people knew differently, and Yeltsen spoke directly to their struggles and frustrations.

So after he comes back from Texas, he becomes sort of the face of change, standing up to the Communist Party, speaking differently, not using the usual jargon, speaking like a normal person would speak.

Gorbachev had introduced reform programs like Peristroika and glass Nut, which were supposed to slowly reform the Soviet system, but Yeltsin had officially lost his patients.

There was some daylight in the closed society with Gorbachev's policies.

He was adamant that you kick that door open, we are going to break it down.

We're going to tear down that wall.

The Pericans have this thing.

The Russian people will topple their government if they saw how other people were living.

We can't wait another second.

Less than two months after Yeltsin returned from.

The US, the Berlin Wall fell.

Communism was faltering, and the Soviet people saw a chance for real change.

Yeltsen soared in popularity.

In the spring of nineteen ninety, Yeltsin was elected in a landslide to the Russian State Legislature, and his colleagues named him President of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic.

But Yeltsen wanted a true mandate, so he took an unprecedented step.

He resigned his membership in the Communist Party and called for general elections in nineteen ninety one.

He won nearly.

Sixty percent of the popular vote as an independent candidate and became the first democratically elected president of Russia.

Meanwhile, Gorbachev was still the head of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, and just two months after Yeltsin's election as President of Russia, a group of Communist hardliners tried to hold Gorbachev hostage and stage a military coup.

Hundreds of tanks rolled into Moscow and pointed their canons at the Russian Parliament building for two days.

The hard line communists demanded that Gorbachev stepped down and for the Communist Party to regain its old school grip on Soviet politics and the economy.

Yelton wasn't having it.

There's this famous footage of him standing on top of a tank, one of the very same tanks that were sent to destroy everything he was fighting for.

They pull him up and he starts reading his speech about peace and land and bread and which is remnants of the Bolshevik revolution, right, that was Lenin saying, But it was in this new lens of like absolutely not, We're going to go not going back, We're going to open up, We're going to.

Do all these things.

You know.

He didn't like Gorbachak, but he saved them because I think his thinking was open up, open up, definitely, don't close it.

So I'm going to stop this thing, and he did.

The tanks turned around and just like that, the coup was over.

But Yeltin wasn't done.

There was one more major change that had to happen if the Soviet people were going to have a say in their future.

In December nineteen ninety one, during a meeting at a hunting lodge in Belarus, Yelten made a bold proposition to the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus, it's time to dissolve the Soviet Union.

Yeltin was supposed to be there to negotiate, create a treaty, not to tear down the entire Iron Curtain, but that's the kind of figure Yelton had to become, uncompromising, bold and little nuts.

The KGB could have arrested him for treason, but he'd seen enough to know there was no going back.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, there's a sense a lot of people have that it was inevitable that there were largest structural forces at play, like the rise of nationalism and countries like Ukraine those certainly played a role, but the role of actual individuals like Yeltsin cannot be overestimated.

The ultimate decision to dissolve the Soviet Union just came down to Yeltsin and two other leaders, the leader of Ukraine and leader of Belarus, and that's it.

And that experience in the supermarket, like without it, it's possible he would not have taken that leap of faith and really exposed himself to potentially being disposed of by the KGB for treason when he made the decision to dissolve the city US.

But I think sort of once you see something, once you see that another way is possible, and other realities possibly can't unsee it.

So that experience in the supermarket I think influenced his decision to dissolve this of union.

The image of Yelton standing on the tank defiantly putting down an attempted coup was probably the highlight of his political career.

It was all downhill from there.

Reelected as Russian President, he was in charge as the country went through a painful transition to capitalism after nearly seventy five years of rigid communist control.

In retrospect, maybe it was all too sudden and too fast, but that's.

The path the people chose.

By the time Yeltsen resigned from office in nineteen ninety nine, he was a physical wreck from years of illness and alcoholism.

That was the red faced Boris yel who Evan Mack remembered seeing on TV as a kid in Russia.

Yelton was unpopular internationally.

He'd become a joke, which is why Evan was so surprised to learn about Yeltsin's historic trip to Randalls and how a Houston grocery store and a risk taking young Yeltsin played such a pivotal role in ending Soviet Communism.

I thought, this is the greatest story that nobody knows about.

Like he was really earth changing stuff that no one knows about.

And so we started writing a one act comedy operatic version of it.

Yep, remember that Evan is a composer.

In twenty twenty, he and his writing partner Joshua Maguire wrote an original opera called Yeltsin in Texas, kind of like Nixon in China, but set in a grocery store and a lot funnier.

After a successful run in Houston and a pause for that thing called the Pandemic.

The show was reimagined as a Broadway style musical called The World Still Needs You Boris Yeltsin.

The climax of the musical is a song called make Your Move.

In it, a Randall's cashier who moonlights as a rock star encourages Yeltsin to seize the moment and become his own political rock star, and.

He shows him as rock and roll moves, which are the fist bump, the peace sign, and the Texas rodeo swing.

And actually, if you look back at the footage him on the tank, he's giving a fist bump, a peace sign.

He's taking that new Russian flag and waving it over his head like a yeehaw of Texas.

You know.

And so because if you think about it, Boris Yelton getting on that tank during a military coup is the most rock star thing that one could absolutely do.

Here's to you, Boris Yeltsin, and here's a clip of make Your Mood Move from Evan's musical.

If there are any.

Broadway producers out there, you can reach him at Evanmack dot com.

Music Seize the Damn thank youss.

One takeaway I think I had from this episode was after it, I went to the grocery store and everything seemed more wonderful.

I kind of realized how much I had taken for granted at the grocery store, and it just it was delightful.

I sometimes bring my baby to the grocery store and he loves it.

He just like loves reaching.

And I think that's a good attitude and approach to take to kind of every life experience.

Yeah.

I love the perspective shift the story gave you.

Yeah, you just appreciate it.

Isn't it wild that communism could be felled by the power of a jell O pudding pop?

Yeah and a candy right?

I mean, like, was it the CIA wasn't fear of nuclear war?

Nope, a Texas grocery store and basically said a bullet a wars can be one with tasty treats.

Maybe we should look into this.

Also, after his me too moment, I didn't think that the mention of Bill Cosby would ever be a source of laughter again, but yet this story with the jell O pudding pops, I was like, ohait and he did it so big surprises.

I like how fororce Elton is firmly a caricature in almost every time he's mentioned in your pick during alcoholic wandering out in the street.

I did enjoy spending some time earlier in his life and career when he's like the firebrand up and coming, and you can kind of understand because there were times where it'd be like, how is this guy in charge of the country?

Would never happen?

Here?

The man of the people thing really comes through in this one.

Yeah, did you cast who's playing Yeltsin in the twenty twenty seven Golden Globe winning film Here?

Okay?

So I went two ways with this one.

I cast it Boris and Jolena Bieberman the person who grew up in Civiet Union talking about what it was like, and then Evan Mack, the opera writer, and then also the Randalls cashier.

So for Boris Yeltsen, I have my dream casting, which would be Philip seymour Hoffman.

Oh right, wouldn't he been?

He killed the role all right?

And then this guy have gone to before in the past, but he is living.

I think Jesse Plemmons looks the most like Boris yeltsin and could pull it off, you know, just do like a little bit of wake gain, get a little vodka, like some pallor going, and he'd nail it.

I love Jesse Plemmons, right, He's just so good.

Constantly think of him for casting.

I'm like, well, if he looks like the part, I'm giving it to Jesse Plemmings.

Now for Elena Bieberman, I was thinking of Anna Taylor Joy.

She actually is Russian from what I understand.

I think that to be an interesting like oh Beck and Soviet Union.

I remember, you know, breadlines, So I thought that would be kind of fun for her.

And then for Evan Mack the Texas Opera songwriter Jason Segal right in the opera then is done with muppets.

I mean, how much fun to have a Boris Yelton muppet.

Maybe this should just be muppets, right?

Is it possible this entire, very special episode should be done only with muppets.

I love it.

And then for the Randalls Cashier because in the opera they have the dance moves, I thought, well we go with Tom Holland because he's known for his dance moves.

I mean that brother could swing.

Oh yeah, Jason, you've seen the singing in the Rain umbrella Meedley right, yes, oh, thank god to anyone who hasn't look it up immediately.

Yes please.

Speaking of Broadway, who do we know?

How do we get Evan Max opera?

This needs to be the come from away of next year.

Who can we call?

Get some Broadway producers on the horn?

And Jason, you're the biggest Broadway fishing auto I know who's constantly going to theater.

How would you imagine this one?

Are you imagining the Texas store?

Are you imagining like something a little bit more magical?

Do you have like a set design for this?

I would love to see a just super bright grocery store set and then have that replaced by something darker.

And now, look, I don't want to step on Evan Max's vision.

I am just the fan.

I'm the one who will go buy the cup with the show logo on it and then we'll use it into the ground for four or five years after.

But it just seems like the perfect topic for a play or musical, just this small historical thing that ended up having a huge impact that people don't know.

These grocery stores.

Magic is happening in the grocery stores.

Magic and Aisle seven.

Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people.

This show is hosted by Danish Schwartz, Zaren Burnett and Jason English.

Today's episode was written by Dave Rouse.

Our senior producer is Josh Fisher.

Editing and sound design by Jonathan Washington.

Additional editing by Mary Doo, Mixing and mastering by Josh Fisher.

Original music by Elise McCoy, show logo by Lucy Kintonia, Social clips by Yarberry Media.

Our executive producer is Jason English.

Special thanks to our voice actor Tom Antonellis, and thanks to Evan Mack for letting us use some music from Yeltson in Texas, which I hope we're all getting to see on Broadway one day.

Very Special Episodes is a production of iHeart Podcasts.