Tag #152664 - Interview #95280 (Grigoriy Kagan)

Perestroika brought this time. However, I did not consider Gorbachev 38, the leader of the Communist Party, to be a serious politician at first. He gave many promises, but there were few actions, but he managed to accomplish some things. Gorbachev removed the ‘Iron Curtain’ 39, which separated us from the rest of the world for many years. He allowed the freedom of speech and the freedom of press. This is true. But it is also true that the poor and unemployed appeared during his rule. Pensioners could not live on their devaluating pensions. The breakup of the USSR [1991], which crowned the Perestroika, was painful for me. The USSR was a strong and powerful state. What do we have instead? We could save the USSR, had we refused from the leading role of the CPSU and socialist ideas. May capitalism have replaced socialism. May the Baltic Republics have separated: they had been forcefully annexed to the USSR and were occupied and they never accepted this, but all other republics may have stayed with the USSR. We would have been strong together.