Paper Summary:

This discussion looks at the late Soviet era, in particular at the reforms implemented under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev, specifically, Perestroika and Glasnost. The paper argues that Gorbachev's reforms failed for two main reasons. The first was that the economic conditions in the USSR at the time were becoming untenable and made any government unpopular. The paper then discusses the other cause that was the nationalism that suddenly emerged with the liberalising of political control in the country, and ultimately forced him out of office.

From the Paper:

"The reforms that followed aimed to increase the freedoms available to citizens of the Soviet Union in order to stimulate them into pulling the country out of stagnation. The two major reforms were perestroika, which aimed to begin rebuilding the Soviet Union, as it was argued that it had stagnated under the Communist system and the second major reform was known as Glasnost. This included reforms as radical as allowing private ownership of business and increased political freedoms dramatically. It was this that was seen as the most radical of the reforms. Not only did grant significant political freedoms such as moderate freedom of association and economic freedoms such as the freedom to own property but it also granted much greater licence of freedom of speech. This was particularly important with relation to the amount of freedom granted to the media . Immediately had this reform gone through when the papers began filling up with heavy criticism for the administration. Such was the extent of the repressed discontent with the direction the USSR had been taking that many of the state owned papers began printing letters that were critical of the party which was seen as being on the take and out of touch. Such criticism did not sit well with the party elites, particularly the more old fashioned hard line members of the CPSU. Such a move was considered a danger to the very nature of the party and the philosophy of the Soviet Union."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Carr, E.H. The Russian Revolution from Lenin to Stalin 1917-1929. Palgrave Macmillan, London:2003.
• Ciobanu, Ceslav. Mikhail Gorbachev: The Decay of Socialism and the Renaissance of Eastern Europe (From the Perspective of an Insider). East European Politics and Societies 18.1 (2004): 45-70.
• di Leo, R. 'The Soviet Union 1985-1990: After Communist Rule the Deluge?', Soviet Studies, 43(3), 1991, pp 429-449
• Gooding, J. 'Gorbachev and Democracy', Soviet Studies, 42(2), 1990, pp 195-231
• Gorbachev, Mikhail. Socialism, Peace and Democracy. Zwan Publications, Moscow, 1987

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