Rock & radiation, not Ronald Reagan, brought down the Kremlin

"No greater nonsense will accompany Ronald Reagan to his grave than the idea that he brought down the Soviet Union and ended the Cold War. Among the many causes of Soviet collapse two words stand out, and they aren't Ronald Reagan.
They are rock and radiation. . . .
Precisely the things most hated by the Reagan's rightist culture warriors here eroded and helped dissolve the old-time Soviet culture there. Beamed in by radio, smuggled in on records and tapes, the "youth music" was unstoppable.
When Mikhail Gorbachev announced Perestroika, it was at least in partial response to the irresistible subversion of the western counterculture. Rock and roll was doing to the remnants of Stalin's Russia what it had already done to Eisenhower's America.
The final blow came not from Ronald Reagan's beloved nuclear weapons, but from the Soviets' own Three Mile Island.
After Chernobyl Unit Four exploded on April 26, 1986, Swedish radiation monitors detected huge clouds of radiation pouring out of the Ukraine. Gorbachev lied about it. Critical days passed before his "open" regime acknowledged the catastrophe.
As apocalyptic radiation poured over their land and into their bodies, millions of Soviet citizens were infuriated to learn from sources outside their country how horrific the disaster really was---and that their lives were in genuine danger. Cancer, birth defects, stillbirths and more soared out of control. Gorbachev's credibility was forever shattered.
Soon a staggering 800,000 draftees---"liquidators"--- were forced into deadly manual clean-up at the reactor site. The horrific maelstrom of resulting disease fed a fierce organization parallel to the US's Vietnam Vets Against the War that remains an uncompromising political force throughout the former Soviet Union.
With the fury aimed at Gorbachev came devastating economic fallout. Untold billions went to evacuate and quarantine the Chernobyl region. The costs are still escalating. The danger of a renewed melt-down still boils beneath the surface."