The USSR killed itself with socialism. Reagan and Thatcher deserve credit too but I firmly believe that the USSR would have either dropped socialism or collapsed even without Reagan. Given enough time. Socialism is like poison. You might be able to tolerate it in small doses but given enough exposure over time an economy will collapse. When you give people more freedom, over time the opposite occurs. That's my point. I don't think enough people on the right get just how disastrous socialism actually is. If they did, their actions would be very different.