Comments by "John Walsh" (@johnwalsh4857) on "Gorbachev gave Russians freedom. They rejected it." video.

  1. the Russian cold war generation who grew up before the 80s needs to be kaput before Russia really reforms. the Ukraine war is the start, a Russian defeat here will signal the turning point
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  2. the cowboy 90s will come back to Russia with a vengeeance yah you will have freedom but massive crime rates and bad economy and social political and economic instability for the next 10 years or so. which will see Russia lose half of its territory to secession.
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  3. Well if yoiu say comfortable under Brezhnev, that means no breadlines of the 80s. otherwise when compared to the west, Soviet and allied lifestyles are several steps down, similiar to a few steps up the poorset of the 3rd world but western aligned countries. Im from Canada and I remember going to the USSR in the early 80s, and remembered it like the tourist areas were clean , good but the the infrastructure looked old and run down, lots of KGB agents in our hotel the Cosmos, the only 5 star hotel in Moscow in the 80s local citizens had shabby clothes, only cars you see are Russian cars, and a few mercedes benzes driven by Communist officials. and everyone is trying to make a buck out of you since you are a tourist they think all tourist from western countris are millionaires, I remember I was eating in the main resto in th Cosmos hotel, when a waiter approached me and was selling stuff, I bought like several bottles of beluga cavair for like 5 USD each. ( or 3 rubles in 1982). The waiter was a funny guy, he told me he only accepts USD, UK Pound, Deutchmarks, Franc but NO Japanese Yen and Italian Lira hahahaha. He told me those were mickey mouse money and he cant change them. He told me while the Ruble was officially strong , it was also mickey mouse money hahahaah. he offered to change 1 USD to 1 Ruble when the official exchange rate was 1 Ruble = 1.25 USD . He was curious about Canadian dollars though but did not accept it since it was unknown money . We exchanged in his view useless mickey mouse money I bought a bunch of Warsaw pact , North Korean won, from him. and I gave him a bunch of Philippine pesos, Canadian dollars, Hong Kong dollars , Taiwan dollars. in exchange haha. He actually said the so called not accepted western currencies were a lot more valuable than the Ruble and warsaw pact currency haha.
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