Not so naive. Read enough Soviet history, and you see how desperate the Communist leadership was to provide their citizenry with household goods comparable to those available in the West. It's as if one of Ronald Reagan's major policy struggles was ensuring every house had a microwave oven.

The inability to simulanteously fund a superpower-level military establishment while enabling a rich "lifestyle" for the people led Gorbachev into the economic and governmental reforms that ultimately undermined the regime.

Indeed; a Refusenik friend of mine said the TV propaganda contrasting "the rich" and "the poor" in the US generally failed because the target audience could see the poor in the US in the '70s or so really weren't that bad off, something members of the nomenklatura making this stuff probably didn't really appreciate.

It's a difficult topic, but I can't help thinking that many 20th and current troubles have their roots in idealists wanting to westernize their societies after seeing the western (and/or soviet) prosperity. So far the attempts seem to have pretty poor success rate. Of course there are no easy answers here. But spreading the gospel of western lifestyle seems to be as likely to incite revolutions and bloodshed as it is likely to pacify.