In 1981 the Soviet Union had fossilised into Brezhnev-era complete inertia. They didn’t know what to do, except that they kept spending a lot on education. As Gorbachev remarked, the peasants could grow plenty of food, but somehow the USSR was unable to make refrigerated trucks to get it to market before it went off.
It amazes me that they were suspected of being diabolically clever disrupters of the West when they could barely keep Ladas on the road.
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