# Were Deng and Gorbachev good or bad guys?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-deng-and-gorbachev-good-or-bad-guys/715351>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [March 19, 2015, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-deng-and-gorbachev-good-or-bad-guys/715351 "2015-03-19T02:15:49Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![Stringbean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Stringbean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stringbean)\
**Post date:** [April 6, 2015, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-deng-and-gorbachev-good-or-bad-guys/715351/41 "2015-04-06T04:16:52Z")

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> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#):
>
> As for ‘starving to death’, there was certainly a lot of _malnutrition_ after the collapse, as well as a massive decline in living standards and things like life expectancy. You started seeing beggars in Russian cities, which you wouldn’t have done before 1989. (Not incidentally, Belarus, which stayed the closest to the centrally planned Soviet model, also endured a much milder economic decline than most of the other republic.) Its not really controversial that Russia between about 1991 and 2000 was a terrible place to live, though of course there was also a class of rich people who profited very handsomely from the fall of communism.

Russia was crumbling prior to Gorbachev, they just hid it well.

Those growing pains were unavoidable; Gorbachev ensured they didn’t end in another violent dictatorship.

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**Author:** ![Fuzzy\_wuzzy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a8b319/32.png) [@Fuzzy\_wuzzy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuzzy_wuzzy)\
**Post date:** [April 6, 2015, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-deng-and-gorbachev-good-or-bad-guys/715351/42 "2015-04-06T06:47:56Z")

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> [@Stringbean](#):
>
> Russia was crumbling prior to Gorbachev, they just hid it well.
> 
> Those growing pains were unavoidable; Gorbachev ensured they didn’t end in another violent dictatorship.

China seemed to turn it’s economy around far more successfully than the Soviet Union. Whatever it was that Gorby tried(Perestroika and Glasnost) seem now to have been a complete failure. The Chinese model suggests Gorbachev would have been better served carrying out economic reform before political reform. And that economic reform needed to be far greater than the ones he actually carried out.

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**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\
**Post date:** [April 6, 2015, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-deng-and-gorbachev-good-or-bad-guys/715351/43 "2015-04-06T13:51:12Z")

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> [@Stringbean](#):
>
> Russia was crumbling prior to Gorbachev, they just hid it well.
> 
> Those growing pains were unavoidable; Gorbachev ensured they didn’t end in another violent dictatorship.

Well, no, he did not ensure; he delayed. Which is worth something. But a violent dictatorship is pretty much what they’ve got now. Still, it could be worse – it’s an authoritarian dictatorship but not a totalitarian one.

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