THE HAT ON THE DEMISE OF THE USSR

Pantload Media honcho's version of history:

2. It was Reagan, a Republican, whose policies defeated the Soviet Union in the first place. Most people generally acknowledge that now.

Here's something just a tad more realistic:

Gorbachev responded to the Soviet Union's problems by introducing perestroika, or economic restructuring, and glasnost, an element of political freedom. Perestroika was unable to reverse the collapsing Soviet economy despite Gorbachev's best efforts. Corruption and bureaucracy was far too entrenched in the economy for legislation to make a dent in the economic crisis. Glasnost was more successful but not in the ways that Gorbachev envisioned. The first free elections in over seventy years occurred in 1989 and reformist politicians swept into power in regional positions across the nation.

And here's a little more reality:

The disintegration of the Soviet Union began on the peripheries, in the non-Russian areas. The first region to produce mass, organized dissent was the Baltic region, where, in 1987, the government of Estonia demanded autonomy. This move was later followed by similar moves in Lithuania and Latvia, the other two Baltic republics. The nationalist movements in the Baltics constituted a strong challenge to Gorbachev's policy of glasnost. He did not want to crack down too severely on the participants in these movements, yet at the same time, it became increasingly evident that allowing them to run their course would spell disaster for the Soviet Union, which would completely collapse if all of the periphery republics were to demand independence.