@ren2871

3 years ago

My Grandfather was a member of the Communist party, was a deputy in the Baku local government and had met Gorbachev on multiple occasions in the Kremlin. Communists like my grandfather blame Gorbachev for the inevitable. Gorbachev took over as leader when the country was already on the brink of collapse and when the Reagan administration was hell on bringing the USSR down. Reagan forced the USSR's hand by increasing military spending to the point that the USSR could not keep up. My other grandfather (on my dad's side) who was a nuclear engineer was also a member of the communist party till about 1980, before he de-registered himself. My grandparents also refused my dad to be a komsomol (a communist youth boy scout), so the tensions were there already before Gorbachev took over. On a different note, it is so important to reinstate how corrupt, inhumane and absurd the communist regime was. Imagine growing up in a system where you had to wait 10 years to be approved for government housing in a shitty apartment complex, where there was no food in the stores, where corruption and nepotism was swept under the rug, communist leaders lived like kings while the rest of the country starved to death, doctors made as much a janitor. Imagine in the USA if scientists and engineers in the FDA, CDC or transportation board had to report to a mill worker with no education, just because that mill worker was a member of the Democratic or Republican party. This is essentially how the Soviet Union functioned, dumb people were given control and the ability to silence smart people.

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