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Comment by Mountain_Skies | Hacker News Reader

What I found crazy about this is that the leader of such a large country had no clue how western countries operate. The Soviets and their allies had plenty of spies in the West and yet their senior leadership didn't even understand the basics of everyday life for the citizens of the countries they were prepared to launch nuclear missiles at. The west was likewise ignorant of much of the details of life behind the Iron Curtain though that's a bit more understandable given the secretive nature of the Soviets.

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What I found crazy about this is that the leader of such a large country had no clue how western countries operate.

All large organizations are subject to the "Thermocline of Truth."

http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/15/the-wetware-crisis-the-t...

We ensure this won't be a problem again by educating all modern autocrats in the US or Britain. Or sometimes France. That way they all know.

What struck me is that we don't know if the Soviets are being accurately quoted in this article. They could write a lot of exaggerations and not be called on them.

given the video of a Moscow supermarket in 1990 (link in the article) it looks like it's pretty accurate

You assume that I hadn't seen the video before writing that.

Look at the quotes. They are over the top. You don't think it's possible that a 1989 reporter could have taken some liberties and not been called on it?

It was 1989, Yeltsin was not a president of Russia. At the time he was a regional Communist Party leader just elected to the (kind of a) parliament of Russian Soviet Federative Socialistic Republic - RSFSR, then still a member of USSR. He would be elected a President of RSFSR in 1990, and in 1991, after dissolution of USSR, Russia became an independent country. Unless one was a diplomat or KGB or shown a special interest in learning the way of life in "the West", there was not too much exposure even for people at his level.

From some family experiences, whatever intelligence services reported to Party bosses, if it did not agree with the Party dogma, it would be ignored.

Besides, they lived much better than the average Soviet citizen (degree of inequality was far greater than that between a ghetto dweller and Zuck), and that's what they wanted to preserve.

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