But that’s on Yeltsin, not on Gorbachev. What’s on Gorbachev is that all the Eastern European countries got to be free. I was born there. Life now is many times better than it was during Communism.

The majority of people who actually lived there before the fall of the soviet union disagree, actually.

It's because problems today are a bit more pressing than problems 40 years ago. And also people who lived in those times were much younger back then, and so generally much healthier and stronger. They are weaker now, and maybe more stressed, and with more health problems. And they subconsciously think that their health decline is due to the change from Communism to Capitalism.

But they forget the empty shelves on stores, the food rationing, the need to bribe the doctors and everyone in the health system, the almost impossibility to move from one city to another (huh, from one country to another you ask? forget about it). The permanent fear of saying the wrong thing. The long lines to buy bread or milk. The hoops you needed to go through to get a color TV set. Do you like reading books? Do you like watching movies? Too bad; you could watch the local productions, or Soviet movies, but not the hundreds of movies that Hollywood produced each year, or read any of the thousands (or tens of thousands) of books published in the West each year. Driving cars? I hope you enjoyed Trabant or Yugo or Lada. Tropical fruit like oranges or bananas? At Christmas time, but not every year. Actually, Christmas was not celebrated, so it was at the New Year time.

This is completely false.

I've read memoirs by Anatoly Chernyaev [1]. And the whole impression was that Gorbachev had no clue about what do next. He was quite successful in breaking existing system but no feasible plan for further movement. Quite similar to what bolshevicks did earlier. Not surprising such people treated with a big share of skepticism in Russia.

Of course Yeltsin was even worse in this respect.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoly_Chernyaev