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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (397246)	7/9/2008 9:45:00 AM
From: TigerPaw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574849

Reagan put pressure on them. It's certain that Jimmy Carter would have put more pressure on them. Russia might still be a democracy .

To: combjelly who wrote (397246)	7/9/2008 12:03:16 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1574849

Talk about bullshit. You are pretty ignorant of the events that went on if you think that the USSR would have held together after the changes that Gorbachev tried to make. By the early 1980s, the costs of hold the Eastern Bloc had gotten extremely high. The standard of living in the DDR was higher than in Moscow because of the subsidies intended to keep them in the alliance. Perestroika and glasnost loosened the rigid control on the media and the Russians started to learn what was really going on. That is when the stories about the alcoholism and declining standard of living started to hit the West, along with in the USSR. Chernobyl didn't help, the attempted coverup damaged government credibility big time. After that, it was really only a question of when and how many would die. As it turned out, not many died. Which was a bit of a surprise. And don't forget the war in Afghanistan and the subsidies they provided non Eastern European countries like Cuba.....they were a significant financial drain.