As each day brings fresh news of political change in poli tical change in one or more of the countries in Eastern Europe (Fein, 1990), political stability in many of those same coun tries appears to deteriorate, and some western analysts even speculate that civil war may occur within the Soviet Union (Powell, 1990). Some observers argue that the political changes occurring in Eastern Europe are the product of long range trends coming to fruition, while others argue that they are a part of a Pandora's Box syndrome, with Mikhail Gorbachev in the role of Pandora loosing unforseen troubles into the socialist world (Mackenzie, 1990).
This research examines contemporary political change in the Soviet Union within the context of the level of instabilityin that country's political environment. The focus of this examination is on the effect on Soviet political stability of Gorbachev's political reforms.
David Easton (1957, 380) said that an attempt can be made to "try to understand political life by viewing each of its aspects piecemeal," or by trying to "view political life as a system of interrelated activities." A major problem associated
1 2with the examination of a political system is that government and politics do not exist in a vacuum they are embedded in, and closely related to, many other activities in a society (Cummings, and Wise, 1987). It is, thus, more profitable to analyze the process of political development as a system of interrelated activities, as opposed to a piecemeal analysis of the components of the development, for the process of poli tical development, as is true of a functioning political sys tem, is an integral part of the society within which it occurs.
Models of political development must be just that models. They may provide a general framework within which the develop ment process within a specific country may be understood. Fur ther, a political system is expected to change over time, ...