Gorbachev's Reforms and the Reversal of History

Abstract

obdurate skeptics that the reforms initiated in the Soviet Union under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev represent no mere tinkering with the Soviet system, but an attempt at fundamentally redirecting what had manifestly become an obsolete political and economic structure. Whether the effort will succeed against the resistance of conservatives and amid conditions of economic crisis and nationality disintegration is another question, as is the question how and why Gorbachev managed to undertake such a radical reform to begin with. To find the answers we need to consider how the Gorbachev era fits into the whole perspective of the Soviet regime's historical development. Gorbachev's own record in office suggests that he did not conceive of his reform program all at once. Certainly its enunciation only unfolded step by step, probably in response to events and problems as they emerged. In its initial presentation at the April Central Committee Plenum in 1985, perestroika was indeed no more than tinkering, though it was based, as Gorbachev himself reported, on considerable discussion beforehand with intellectual critics of the old system under Leonid Brezhnev.' In this first phase, Gorbachev was doing little more than pick up the reform program of Brezhnev's immediate successor as General Secretary of the Commu-