A forum user claims shaving foam brought down the USSR

Forum user attributes the end of the USSR to shaving foam

The standard explanation is that the Soviet bloc collapsed due to its economy. Another theory, spread on a forum, reduces it to something more domestic: shaving foam. The argument claims that it wasn't the CIA that "invented" Gorbachev, but a lobby determined to contaminate the system from within. The proof, it is suggested, is that the leader would have legalized razors and feminine shaving products, and that in six years, the Union fell apart.

Was it state capitalism that brought down the USSR?

No, according to the standard account; yes, according to this text, which insists on a debated point: that the Soviet economy was actually state capitalism and that communism, as such, never truly existed. It argues that free-market capitalism prevailed, with Yugoslavia, China, and North Korea as questionable exceptions. The thesis mixes a serious academic concept—central planning interpreted as a form of capitalism—with a conspiratorial twist that no source supports.

From the Soviet collapse to supermarket loot

From there, the matter diverges. What begins as geopolitics ends in "loot" and "plunder" from a discount chain and hair products. Some recall that those hairs "are, nowadays, like underarm hairs" and are useless. That's the level. Another message simply asks if this deserves to be on the front page or is just pure clickbait.

With such an arsenal, the question is no longer whether Gorbachev shaved. It's why grand theories about the end of an empire always end up on the bargain bin shelf. And no one answers.