Selling off the communist factories was a huge mistake. Should have followed the Chinese model of slowly introducing capitalist things into the existing economy. Instead they laid everyone off and of course everything went to shit.
The Chinese model was to avoid what Gorbachev did, and massacre their own people at Tiananmen square.
That really worked out for China didn't it. Under Xi Jinping there's a resurgence of Communist ideology and not at all the gradual acclimation to Western style democracy everyone had expected.