Mikhail Gorbachev has died

I was taught that Ronald Reagan ended the cold war and gave us the longest lasting economic boom.

I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle, in the sense that it never ended. It only took a back seat in the media while Russia was disorganized.

it ended for 150 or so million people in Eastern Europe, that were freed from Russia.

Aren't their countries still filled with Soviet era (or even more recent?) environmental hazards, like ubiquitous asbestos and who knows what else?

When i took Russian, we watched a Soviet propaganda film : it bragged about asbestos exports as a sign of Soviet strength, and i think the teachers (one native Russian speaker) perhaps showed it to emphasize what a disaster had already been created (this was shortly pre 2000).