Former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev apparently blamed “Dallas” for the fall of his country.
“Dallas” was a hit show on CBS that started in the late 1970s, and was one of the most successful television series ever made. Well, it turns out it might have been successful at a lot more things than just entertaining American audiences! It might have helped destroy communism! (RELATED: David Hookstead Is The True King In The North When It Comes To College Football)
Famous musician Dave Stewart said the following during an appearance on “A Cuppa Happy” about what the former U.S.S.R. leader told him about the collapse of the Soviet Union and the role “Dallas” played, according to the Independent:
What Gorbachev was saying – it was Dallas, the TV show. 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.’…[Gorbachev] said that [Dallas] had more effect – that half an hour – than anything else.
Obviously, there are a lot of moving pieces here, and I’m sure there were more things involved in the collapse of the Soviet Union than just “Dallas.”
After all, that whole incident at Chernobyl certainly didn’t do communism and the Soviet government any favors.
Having said that, I love the idea that a popular TV show was instrumental in the collapse and destruction of communism.
I love absolutely everything about. While I never watched “Dallas,” I’m familiar enough with the premise. It more or less follows rich oil people in Texas through all the chaos and scandals in their lives.
It showed the best parts about the American way of life, and it was about extremely wealthy individuals. Seeing as how people in the Soviet Union lived under communism, it’s easy to understand why they’d be blown away by something like “Dallas.”
Maybe we could have ended the Cold War a hell of a lot earlier if we just started broadcasting American television into Soviet controlled territories.
We probably could have saved ourselves a lot of time and the threat of nuclear annihilation.
We need to know more details about this ASAP. If Gorbachev wrote a book about his opinions on American TV and its impact on Soviet culture, I’d read it in a heartbeat.
