Answer:
Because Russians were used to high levels of government control.
Step-by-step explanation:
From the beginning of the Russian state with the tsars, passing through the Russian Revolution in 1917, the days of Lenin and Stalin who came after, Russian people were used to high levels of government control. However, in the 1980s, the Soviet Union (or Russia, if you wish) was facing a terrible economic crisis because of the corruption, inefficiency and internal structure of the Communist Party. Mikail Gorbachev was elected as Chief of the Soviet State, and he began to promote several changes to recover the Soviet Union. What became known as Perestroika and Glasnost, these political reforms represent each one, political and economic opening to the capitalist world. Also, these policies relent government control for the first time in a century and a half, which was strange for many Russians.