BERNIE SANDERS’S SOVIET HONEYMOON:

During Bernie’s mayoral tenure, Burlington formed an alliance with the Soviet city of Yaroslavl, 160 miles northeast of Moscow. When in 1988 he married his wife, Jane, the mayor decided it would be a perfect place for his honeymoon. In a tape of his interview with Yaroslavl’s mayor, Alexander Riabkov, Sanders acknowledges that housing and health care appear to be “significantly better” in the U.S. than in the socialist paradise. “However,” he added, “the cost of both services is much, much, higher in the United States.”

Sanders made further globe-trotting expeditions to socialist countries. He visited Cuba, scoring a meeting with Havana’s mayor. In 1985 he attended the celebrations marking the sixth anniversary of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua. “In a letter addressed to the people of Nicaragua, penned in conjunction with that trip, Sanders denounced the activities of the Reagan administration, which he said was under the influence of large corporations,” the Guardian notes. “In the long run, I am certain that you will win,” Sanders wrote, “and that your heroic revolution against the Somoza dictatorship will be maintained and strengthened.” (The Sandinistas were ousted by Nicaragua’s voters in 1990).

When P.J. O’Rouke reported back from a Nation magazine-sponsored river trip up the Volga in 1982, he famously described the pro-commie cruisers as “people who believed everything about the Soviet Union was perfect, but they were bringing their own toilet paper.” I wonder if Bernie did the same during his socialist safaris?