Perestroika

Perestroika (Russian, “restructuring”), a key element of the campaign initiated by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to reform and revitalize the Soviet system. First mentioned by Gorbachev in a speech at a meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in April 1985, perestroika came to encompass a wide variety of political and economic policies. It was implemented along with Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost (“openness”), which facilitated public debate of controversial issues.

Perestroika at first mainly referred to efforts to reform the ailing Soviet command economy by reducing the power of central authorities and introducing elements of a market-based system. A major part of the reforms involved expanding private ownership, which had long been shunned by the regime for ideological reasons. Perestroika also came to mean changes in other aspects of the Soviet system, including the bureaucracy and political life. Although the Communist Party was to remain the dominant political institution in the Soviet Union, other political groups were allowed to participate for the first time, and citizens had a greater role in choosing leaders in elections.

The response to the reforms was mixed in the Soviet Union. Intellectuals and the young—who generally had the skills needed to succeed in the new conditions and were dissatisfied with the old system—tended to support the changes. Bureaucrats, older people, and those with less education feared the consequences of the changes and opposed them. Conservative elements of the party leadership and military also opposed the new policies. However, leaders of the Soviet Union’s many non-Russian ethnic groups tended to support Gorbachev’s reforms, which allowed them to mobilize citizens around ethnic issues, but they also believed the changes did not go far enough.

In the economic realm, perestroika resulted in the introduction of many partial reforms. However, conservative and bureaucratic opponents prevented a systematic implementation of the reforms. Gorbachev vacillated between instituting more radical economic reforms and returning to centralized control to try to halt the continuing deterioration of the Soviet economy.

It was primarily the political changes Gorbachev set in motion and his inability to deal effectively with the aspirations of non-Russian nationalities that brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. However, the country’s poor economic performance, which perestroika failed to stem, and the chaotic situation that perestroika’s uneven and halting introduction produced in the economic sphere, also contributed to this end (see Communism, Collapse of).