> By the time the USSR collapsed, many Soviet citizens had positive/neutral views of Western culture if not politics. It was a total soft power defeat.
If by propaganda you mean "having a demonstrably better quality of life", then yeah, the West had a better propaganda machine which successfully persuaded many in the Soviet Union that maybe our system wasn't so bad after all.
But if we take a more narrow definition of propaganda that doesn't include actually having a better lifestyle, the Soviet Union propaganda machine had a lot more work on their hands in order to persuade a substantial portion of the West that their system worked. Under that definition of propaganda I think it's no contest which propaganda machine was more effective—to this day we have people in the West who will insist to an Eastern European's face that life in the Soviet Union wasn't so bad.
If by propaganda you mean "having a demonstrably better quality of life", then yeah, the West had a better propaganda machine which successfully persuaded many in the Soviet Union that maybe our system wasn't so bad after all.
But if we take a more narrow definition of propaganda that doesn't include actually having a better lifestyle, the Soviet Union propaganda machine had a lot more work on their hands in order to persuade a substantial portion of the West that their system worked. Under that definition of propaganda I think it's no contest which propaganda machine was more effective—to this day we have people in the West who will insist to an Eastern European's face that life in the Soviet Union wasn't so bad.