people in eastern block were many times less wealthy than people in the west
Less wealthy, yes, but not many times less wealthy, provided that all basic (and many not so basic) living needs were covered virtually for free, including guaranteed employment, free medicine, free education and so on. Also, it's easy to be wealthy with a 14-digit national debt.
...were less free, couldn't even choose the gov
That's propaganda. Soviet Union was a pretty democratic state at all levels, and anyyone could choose to go with a party career if he liked to.
It was not sustainable, without Gorbachev it would have ended the same, only later and probably more violent.
The second part is a citation of a 15-year old popular joke on Gorbachev, about his incompetence combined with wishful thinking combined with unwillingness to admit his own mistakes.
A world I was referring to is a so called Second World, that was a Soviet block. Being second here does not mean to be somewhere between the first and the third, it means standing on par with (self-proclaimed) First World. And Soviet Union really was a developed, technologically and culturally advanced world. Now we see degradation everywhere, we are on a clear path to the Third World, and we need this modernization. Well, Russia has undergone some successful modernizations in the past, all of them were quite painful. Last one was led by Stalin so you can get an idea of what I mean by "painful", and failed modernizations were even worse. So, it is arguable that Gorbachev made more evil for his people than Stalin did.