> The guy was a tool that was instrumental in the ultimate dissolution of the USSR. As I've said elsewhere in this thread, the people who tore apart the USSR d

> The guy was a tool that was instrumental in the ultimate dissolution of the USSR. As I've said elsewhere in this thread, the people who tore apart the USSR did so because the USSR didn't work. That he went on to be instrumental in the ultimate dissolution of the USSR is not evidence that his shock and awe at the abundance in the US was staged. > USA undoubtedly had better access to a wide variety of groceries due to its geography and agrarian economy. Russia doesn't have a California or Mexico (the best candidate, Turkey, was part of NATO). Your parent commenter is talking about the reactions they got from people visiting Finland. > That doesn't mean USA also didn't have a vastly superior propaganda ecosystem, from Hollywood to the NYT. The USA had a better propaganda system if you include the facts they had at their disposal as part of that system. If we instead look at how well each country did with the facts that they had, you are living proof that the USSR's propaganda system was incredible. Faced with the fact that people in the USSR starved by the millions while people next door in Finland had abundance, you somehow manage to place the blame on geography instead of on the human systems that the Soviets put in place.