[throwaway122916]

I lived in Soviet Union as well during the collapse. I think there is a lot of propaganda from the west that makes you think it wasn't Gorbachev's fault.

People were happy, had children and believed in their country and made progress in art and science. Then one person who possibly had good intentions "gave everyone freedom". You can't just do that without consequences. It should have been a very gradual transition similar to how it is in China. Instead the country got completely destroyed. Every single thriving industry collapsed and people's savings were worth nothing basically overnight. Police stopped enforcing laws, gangs appeared all over the place, everyone started doing drugs. It was a disaster.

Gorbachev was almost immediately hated throughout the country.

If USSR economy was in free fall, how come GDP per capita was about 2x smaller in Soviet Union compared to USA in 1989 while income distribution was much more even?

Edit: If you believe propaganda in US doesn't exist, look at this law https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-...

[viljar]

> People were happy

Russians - may be, All the other oppressed and occupied nations - no. Cant vouch for other but almost every Estonian secretly hoped for freedom and despised Russians. When our chance came we acted swiftly. Soviet Union was just another form of Russian Empire and a way to try to control the world.

[WeaselNo7]

This is a similar tale told by friends from Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia.

[egman_ekki]

However, for people in these countries it wasn't a tale. It was a harsh reality...

[dragonwriter]

> I lived in Soviet Union as well during the collapse. I think there is a lot of propaganda from the west that makes you think it wasn't Gorbachev's fault.

The Soviet Union, when Gorbachev took over, had spent itself to the brink of collapse in a decades long military spending competition with the richest nation on the planet and it's rich allies, and papered over that with propaganda, which was itself weakening after some notable and hard to cover up setbacks.

Gorbachev pulled back some of the veil of propaganda simultaneously with (and as part of) trying to engineer a soft landing. It's true he largely failed, but I doubt anyone could have done much better (an authoritarian might have managed to paper over things longer and direct blame at external actor when the bottom eventually fell out, and by doing so remained more popular at home -- at least, among Russians if not the rest of the people under Soviet rule.)

I think much of the perception that things were his fsult is a result of pre-Gorbachev propaganda (mostly Soviet, but also Western propaganda about the strength of the USSR that served to shore up support for the Western side of the spending war.)