So It Was Gorbachev and the "virus" of Western consumerism

The Pope Didn't End Communism By Marc Fisher

No one I spoke to in Leipzig that night [in November, 1989] mentioned the pope. Nor did any other demonstrators, protest leaders, renegade clergy, or rebellious academics there or anywhere else I visited on my rounds during that dramatic autumn. In East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union, the talk was all about Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of openness, about how it was suddenly possible to get copies of some of the more daring Russian journals, and about how a few adventurous souls in the pulpits and on official state television and radio were making ever-more-pointed comments about a system that treated its people like incompetent children...

Especially in East Germany, where almost everyone could watch West German TV (though they had to keep the volume way down because it was strictly verboten to watch, and if the neighbor heard, there could be trouble), people talked about their jealousy for the material goods that Westerners enjoyed—the clothes, the shoes, the cars, the food. They talked about their dreams of traveling outside the Soviet Bloc and about the hopes—mainly for a particular career or area of study—they'd had when they were young. And they talked about the freedom to say what they wanted or to teach their children about realities other than what the socialist state had ordained.

Nor was it Reagan.