Eagba:
can north Korea just open their border and allow their people to japa at will and see what will be left of the regime.
Instead of operating the world biggest prison.

Kasssandra:


He did not.

Fact is, the Soviet Union was on a downward slope by the 1960's...the oil boom of the 1970's just delayed the inevitable.(Some people were already seeing the downfall of the USSR by the early 1980's...when Gorby was just an apparatchnik)

The basis of the economy of the USSR was government run monopoly companies that were not allowed to compete globally. Meanwhile, the USA government won't protect their domestic companies the same way...with the result being that their companies had to up their game to compete with Europe and Japan and later on Korea and Taiwan....meaning they got innovative, better, and so forth. By the time Gorbachev came around, the soviet companies were weak compared to Western companies. Problem 1.

Also, the soviets gave free housing, free healthcare, etc...without paying for it by taxes, etc. By the 1980's they were running out of money to pay for free stuff (intially they got money from war repartrations from WW2, then the oil boom of the 1970's...THEN THE money ran out.) Problem 2.

Also, in the Western countries...you do well at work, they promote thee...and give you cash incentives. In the USSR? Maybe a promotion, and a medal, but not much in the way of cash incentives. Productivity suffers, economic development suffers. Problem 3.

On top of that, the USSR was basically Rossiya subsidsing smaller countries in Europe and Asia...and paying for a capital intensive defence industry, AND subsidisng a war in Afghanistan, AND...helping a lot of third world countries. That drains money faster. Problem 4.

There was nothing Gorbachev, or the hardliners who tried to remove him , could do.

The reason why we have a Communist china? The Chinese in 1979 realised that they had to make their economy capitalist., and eventually open up to global competition. That's why they still exist. If the Soviets had done the same in the 1960's...there still would have been a USSR.

mysticwarrior:
Nigeria wey people dey japa comot everyday our corrupt regime is still getting worst.

Pacesetter123:
He was a weak leader.
How can you allow Western pressure to make you yield so easily to external influence thereby undermining the internal sovereignty of your country.
They forced you to dissolve ur own union while their own union (NATO) stands.
With what the West are currently doing to Central and Eastern Europe, it's enough for great leader like King Putin to consider your actions (collapse of Soviet Union n the fall of Berlin Wall) as the greatest mistake of the 20th century.
Such nonsense that give rise to a unipolar government world wouldn't have happened if Putin was the then president.
That's why I will forever respect Putin for showing strong, good and efficient leadership.

Anyway,RIP to him.

Guyman01:

Too much CNN is bad for foreign affairs

BentizilL:

Every country has the right to own anything they want as long some countries also have it, that's why they're called sovereign country...

What's bad about them having nuclear weapon...
Is US, Russia, China, North Korea and even Israel not having it??

US is evil and that's it

BentizilL:

Every country has the right to own anything they want as long some countries also have it, that's why they're called sovereign country...

What's bad about them having nuclear weapon...
Is US, Russia, China, North Korea and even Israel not having it??

US is evil and that's it

mysticwarrior:


Thank you very much grandstar, of all the people in nairaland who have quoted me you are one person I respect the most. Not just because you are intelligent and vast in knowledge but because you know how to make corrections without lacing it with insults unlike some folks here.

Gorbachev was not a warlike man like his soviet predecessors Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko the Ukrainian.

Kasssandra:


I'm not sure about the blood shed. Armenia, Azerbajan, Georgia, had some bloody incidents in the run up to the breakup...and then the issues in these countries..plus Chechnya, Dagestan , Moldova and Ukraine are left over from the breakup.

Crafteck1:


If not for us, the thing wey russia 4 don use u and ur people do ehnnn...

BentizilL:

It's otherwise, if not Russia the thing wey the West for don use u and Ur people do ehn...

HonNL:
Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev died this evening after a severe and prolonged illness,” the Central Clinical Hospital reported.

Gorbachev facilitated the reunification of Eastern and Western Germany.


SOURCE

HonNL:
Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev died this evening after a severe and prolonged illness,” the Central Clinical Hospital reported.

Gorbachev facilitated the reunification of Eastern and Western Germany.


SOURCE