Restructuring the Symbolic World in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe

Abstract

For a long time after Mikhail Gorbachev took over as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), many people both inside and outside the Soviet Union were skeptical, downplaying the significance of all these astonishing changes. It's all just talk, one would frequently hear, nothing has really changed. The basic problems of the Soviet system still lie in the areas of economic and in the heavy hand of the Soviet bureaucratic system. The latter has not changed, so people would say, and there is still nothing to buy in the stores. If anything, the situation has gotten worse. This paper undertakes to show how and why restructuring of the symbolic world, i.e., of the political system, has been an indispensable prerequisite to any effective restructuring of the economic and administrative system. It attempts to show concretely why glasnost and the rebirth of politics were much more than mere talk, despite their failure to bring about improvements in the economy and even sometimes not very encouraging results in reforming the administrative system.