“Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”  George Santayana (also attributed to others). 

Our universities and streets are filled with the doomed who think socialism/Marxism, even Islamism, are the inevitable keys to a bright future. They’re not entirely to blame. The Marxists and Islamists teaching them are, but now and again it’s wise to revisit history that we might stave off doom a little longer.

September 9, 1976, Japan. Soviet Air Force pilot Viktor Belenko landed his MiG 25 and asked for asylum. It turned out the MiG 25 was in some ways brilliant, in other ways crude and far behind us in technology.  It had been tracked making high speed runs which caused great concern in the West, but Belenko explained those propaganda dashes always junked the plane’s huge engines.

Graphic: book cover scan by author

As a pilot of what was then the Soviet’s hottest jet, Belenko enjoyed perks unavailable to all but the highest-ranking Russians, yet when he first arrived in America, driven past a common strip mall, Belenko demanded to see the stores. In his book MiG Pilot, John Barron described the scene.  Belenko was shocked and amazed at the profusion of goods in a small supermarket, at the clothing in a small men’s store, at the electronics in another store. 

“All of Belenko’s suspicions about the true nature of the shopping center were fully and finally validated when he saw a service station on the corner. Three cars, all, as it happened, driven by women, were being fueled at the same time, a boy was cleaning the windshield of one car, and there were no lines. In Belenko’s past life, gasoline outlets were so scarce that a wait of four or five hours for fuel was ordinary.

‘I congratulate you,” Belenko said en route back to the mansion. “That was a spectacular show you put on for me.’

‘What do you mean?’

“I mean that place; it’s like one of our show kolkhozes where we take foreigners.’

Nick laughed, but not Peter. ‘Viktor, I give you my word that what you’ve just seen is a common, typical shopping center. There are tens of thousands all over America.’

It took Belenko months to realize the truth. The reality of every day America was unlike anything he had ever seen or could imagine.  Fast forward to September 16, 1989, Houston, TX.  

After a visit to the Johnson Space Center, Boris Yeltsin visited an American supermarket:

It was September 16, 1989 and Yeltsin, then newly elected to the new Soviet parliament and the Supreme Soviet, had just visited Johnson Space Center. [skip]

Yeltsin, then 58, “roamed the aisles of Randall’s nodding his head in amazement,” wrote Asin. He told his fellow Russians in his entourage that if their people, who often must wait in line for most goods, saw the conditions of U.S. supermarkets, “there would be a revolution.”

Like Belenko, Yeltsin was stunned. He had no frame of reference.

Yeltsin asked customers about what they were buying and how much it cost, later asking the store manager if one needed a special education to manage a store. In the Chronicle photos, you can see him marveling at the produce section, the fresh fish market, and the checkout counter. He looked especially excited about frozen pudding pops.

“Even the Politburo doesn’t have this choice. Not even Mr. Gorbachev,” he said.

The fact that stores like these were on nearly every street corner in America amazed him.  [skip]

About a year after the Russian leader left office, a Yeltsin biographer later wrote that on the plane ride to Yeltsin’s next destination, Miami, he was despondent. He couldn’t stop thinking about the plentiful food at the grocery store and what his countrymen had to subsist on in Russia.

In Yeltsin’s own autobiography, he wrote about the experience at Randall’s, which shattered his view of communism, according to pundits. Two years later, he left the Communist Party and began making reforms to turn the economic tide in Russia. 

It is easy to take what we have for granted, easier for some, particularly the young who have never had to work for anything, never built anything, to despise those that have, to embrace the lies of those promising an equitable utopia.  In Viktor Belenko, who died, a free man, in America in 2023, and Boris Yeltsin, who died in 2007, there is a lesson for advocates of Marxism and Islamism. The grass isn’t greener elsewhere. Liberty provides astounding benefits, and the lack of liberty takes them away.

Unless our young are taught history, actual history, and learn from it, they may one day be like Belenko and Yeltsin, amazed at the bounty of liberty. More likely, sadly, is there will be no place left to teach them that lesson.

Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.