From: Monte Davis 

"Phil Payne"  wrote:

>I'm sure Reagan's policies helped, but they cannot be accounted
>"responsible" for the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Oh, I agree -- I was just throwing a bone to the acolytes of St. Ronald.
The USSR's own sclerosis did much more, eroding the belief in the system,
the Party and military discipline that would in previous decades have kept
a Gorbachev far from the top, or squashed a Yeltsin.

I never visited the USSR or Eastern Europe, but my impression is that by
the late Brezhnev years, there was a level of popular cynicism that makes
US or UK whingeing ("government can't do anything right, leaders just
feather their own nests") look mild by comparison.

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