yeah, he really cut his own branch very efficiently... we had central planning (with heavy guidance from those f
ckers from Moscow that invaded us in '68) that just didn't work in long term. People were considering bananas and oranges exotic hard-to-get stock in shops with empty shelves. I recall my parents standing 2 hour queues in crazy weekend hours in -15 Celsius just to get their son some fruit with vitamin C (or fresh bread).Capitalism ain't perfect, far from it, but what we had here was a major clusterfck, no thank you. And what changed is move to open economy, call it capitalism if you want. With its own warts and issues, but much better overall.
Previous regime got the worst out of people, this at least tries to do the opposite.