Mikhail Gorbachev & Reforms

In March 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) Central Committee, and Chairman of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) Council of Defense. At the time of this election, he was already a member of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet. In the somewhat more than four years that he has been the nation's leader, he has introduced far reaching social, political, and economic initiatives. Perestroika is the Russian language term applied to the restructuring of the nation's societal systems. Glasnost is the Russian language term used to describe the openness with which restructuring, the need for restructuring, and almost anything else may be freely discussed by ordinary Soviet citizens. Indeed, under Gorbachev's leadership, such open discussion is encouraged.

One of the first (perhaps the first) western detailed analyses of the Gorbachev proposals was presented by Martin Walker, Moscow correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, in The Waking Giant in 1986. Walker's work was published barely a year and a half after Gorbachev gained the top positions of political leadership in the Soviet Union. His analysis dealt with Gorbachev's rise to power, the nature of his proposed reforms, the relationship of these reforms to Soviet history

1 2and experience, and their relationship to reform experiences in other socialist countries. He also considered the state of the reforms t

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in the Slovak Central Committee, to retain higher levels of centralized control than were integral to the model (Shawcross, 1970). As a consequence, the Model failed as badly in Slovakia, as it had at the national level. By the time discontent with the entire state of affairs in Czechoslovakia enabled Dubcek to oust Atonin Novotny as leader of the Czech Communist Party, and to succeed to that position himself, the thrust of his reform efforts were no longer economic; they were political. Thus, what the leaders in the USSR and the other Warsaw Pact countries thought they were witnessing in Czechoslovakia under Dubcek was an assault on the 12socialist political system, as opposed to a program of economic reform. In great part, the Warsaw Pact assessment was correct. Dubcek had, at last, become convinced that Sik was correct, and that meaningful reforms in the political structure were required, if economic reform was to be successful. His understanding, however, came too late in the day, and his actions at that late stage were interpreted by his socialist neighbors as a threat, rather than as a reform. The Czech experience of the 1960s contains significant parallels for Gorbachev's reforms of the 1980s. Further, the Cze

Category: Foreign - M