Gorbachev's Perestroika — Beginning of a Soviet Socialist Social Market Economy?

Abstract

To what extent Mikhail Gorbachev′sGlasnostandPerestroikaanticipate the paradigm of a socialist market economy, is investigated. Gorbachev, like China′s Deng Xiaoping, realises that socio‐economic theories which abstract themselves from the observations and needs of daily life have little relevance. That is, a meaningful paradigm has to pay attention to society′s values, especially to the interrelationship of personal initiative, morality, law, government and public policy. Hence, Gorbachev advocates the establishment of more favourable socio‐economic conditions to lay the foundation for a “functional socialist social market economy”, however defined, in the Soviet Union.