Another excellent article, your ability to study all these intricacies amazes me. I was a child when both "glasnost" and "perestroika" was introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in Soviet Union. He became very popular in the Western world. He was the only Soviet Leader I knew in my childhood. But, he was not popular in Soviet Union and that was proved after the fall of the Union. The Liberal supported Boris Yeltsin, while the communist blaming him for the fall of the Soviet Union, kept him (Gorbachev) at a distance. Now it doesn't seem that he will be popular again. As far as the countries of the Bloc are concerned they either depended on their natural resources for their survival or weapons manufacturing was other source of income. Valdimir Putin through different Business Fair tried to diversify the industries, but succeeded to a limited extent. Telecom and Diamond Cutting are two other industry Russia has had to some extent other than Weapon Manufacturing and Natural Resource Industry.
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Yes thank you for the feedback and personal insight. I always found the history of the Soviet Union and Russia particularly interesting. When I took a course in Russian literature and culture and I always found the richness reflective of historical change. Gorbachev was indeed popular due to his pivot towards what appeared at the time, where Western ideals centered around more open and transparent economic reforms as well as some of the cultural and social changes he implemented. Of course, like contemporary times, resource exploitation seems to be the principle goal of foreign policy. This was principle in the US excursions in Latin America and is being mirrored today in the middle east and I assume is all part of the Grand Strategy that influential academics like Kissinger and Brzezinski extol.
I salute your exemplary knowledge of the subject. And am also grateful to you for answering me on my comments. You are simply the best person to continue writing on this subject as you also have taken a course on Russian literature and culture. I for one am just a enthusiast and therefore, forgive me if i go wrong somewhere.