I should add that people weren't terribly happy with the Soviet system either. It was perceived as insufficiently socialist and wracked with hypocrisy. People didn't have a clue what a market economy was: They thought it was basically socialism only with more of the cool stuff you see in Western movies.
Chris Doss The Russia Journal
------- Me: This is pretty much general Russian opinion. This idea promulgated in the West that the fall of the USSR was about an oppressed people throwing of their shackles is simply laughable. 90% of people in the USSR were socialists or communists of various sorts. Andrei Sakharov was about as representative of Soviet opinion as Noam Chomsky is of American. (I might add that celebrating the fall of the USSR involves either ignorance or moral vacuity.)
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CB: Here, here .
Chris Doss The Russia Journal