Indeed it’s amazing how many people have no idea how it was.
Yes it is. I grew up during that era and remember the cold war for sure. When faced with the reality of their ideology even the leaders of the USSR couldn't deny how messed their system was.
Boris Yeltsin in his autobiography regarding his visit to Randall's grocery store in Clear Lake, TX (Houston) Sept. 16, 1989.
“When I saw those shelves crammed with hundreds, thousands of cans, cartons and goods of every possible sort, for the first time I felt quite frankly sick with despair for the Soviet people,” Yeltsin later wrote in his autobiography, “Against the Grain.” “That such a potentially super-rich country as ours has been brought to a state of such poverty! It is terrible to think of it.”
Yeltsin noted, “Even the Politburo doesn’t have this choice. Not even Mr. Gorbachev”