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Mikhail Gorbachev ‘blamed Dallas for bringing down communism in the Soviet Union’

CLASSIC soap Dallas brought down communism in the Soviet Union, Eurythmics star Dave Stewart has claimed.

He said it opened the eyes of those behind the Iron Curtain to the lives of the rich and famous....

“Somebody managed to get a VHS to work and broadcast it to part of Russia and they thought, ‘Hang on, that’s how people live in America’.

"He said that had more effect, that half an hour, than anything else.”

You heard that correct. Gorbachev admitted that Texas single-handedly won the Cold War!!!

Nice! Well that’s a compliment.

Nothing scientific, but I can validate the sentiment expressed by Gorbachev and Stewart. I was part of a tour group that visited St Petersburg and Moscow for a week in 1985. As soon as folks found out I was from Dallas they were asking me if I knew the characters and if it was all true. They were obsessed with the "royalty" of the self-made Ewings. I was kind and did my best to explain it was exaggerated, but after 60 years of rationing and government control of everything the Soviet citizens were excited by the show.
Nick

Filmed entirely in the State of Texas:

The East German ex-communist military officers I met in about 1990 or so, when I asked them what they thought about the west now that they had unfettered access, all said the same thing: "My eyes have been opened." I don't remember them mentioning Dallas tho. :) One of them had been a fighter squadron commander and was able to travel closer to the border than the others. He told me that when he did so, he started realizing that maybe everything he had been told about the west was not quite true. The others were of lower rank, and were not able to travel. They said the only thing they were ever taught about the US were drugs, over-rich capitalists and lots of poor peeple, and racism, racism, racism. Kinda like an american university. But after the wall came down: "My eyes have been opened!"