This sounds apocryphal. I don't doubt Yeltsin was impressed by his visit to the supermarket, but by 1989 the writing was more than on the wall for the demise of the USSR. I imagine it'd be more accurate to say that Yeltsin was excited by the prospects of a transformed economy, seeing the prosperity of the U.S. firsthand, rather than his visit being any kind of tipping point in the Soviet Union's downfall.
There was joke in the Soviet Union "if you see a line, get in it."
It didn't matter if the line was for toilet paper and you had enough. You'd get some extra toilet paper and barter with someone who had extra laundry detergent and not enough TP.
This was common Soviet experience.
It's somewhat surprising to me that Yeltsin, who was obviously high up in the party apparatus, was surprised at the plenty of the US, but nevertheless my point is that the story is not apocryphal.
Was it a trigger for the collapse of the Soviet Union? Honestly, probably. One among many.
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.
He wrote "When I saw those shelves crammed with hundreds, thousands of cans, cartons and goods of every possible sort, for the first time I felt quite frankly sick with despair for the Soviet people. That such a potentially super-rich country as ours has been brought to a state of such poverty! It is terrible to think of it."
I have no doubt this happened, but my gut says the US govt set this up to help him make the transition look like a principled decision rather than an outright loss. I'm sure the CIA was more than happy to help him with PR side of things.
From what I saw on video, I bet he was. He might have travelled earlier to other Socialist block countries and saw lots of socialist facade stores there, but a visit to a place for simple folk in the US was much more impressive.
(This is why when I travel, I go not to the center, but to the fringes of the cities, to see how the common people live.)
And I'm sure this contributed to his ideas of how the country should be like.
Who even cares? It’s Boris Yeltsin, famous good guy and Russian patriot who definitely had a positive income on Russia. Only Cold War-pilled Westerners would think that this would sound like a good story.
Anyway, Robin Williams predicted it all five years before Yeltsin's trip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHIcmoY3_lE