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Soviet Politics in the Gorbachev Era: The End of Hesitant Modernization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Ronald Amann
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Extract

This is a sequel to an article written by the same author, which was published in the Journal in 1986. The current pace of economic and political reform in the Soviet Union represents a ‘paradigm’ change, which Western specialists have found difficult and challenging to assimilate; concepts have lagged behind events. The key to understanding these changes and the reason why they have been so long delayed lies in the fusion of economic and political institutions formed during the Stalin period. The interdependence of economic and political factors is explored as a basis for understanding why political reform has been a necessary accompaniment to economic reform. One can discern in the pattern of political reform an attempt to increase the level of democratization without fundamentally destabilizing the political and social order. Since this strategy requires that a new political culture will take root faster than the growth of popular discontent at deteriorating economic performance and frustrated national aspirations, the author is pessimistic as to the outcome.

Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , July 1990 , pp. 289 - 310
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

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5 Archie Brown, in particular, deserves credit for being among the first to pick up clues that a major reform was in the offing. See for example: ‘Andropov: Discipline and Reform’, Problems of Communism (01/02 1983), 18–31Google Scholar; ‘Gorbachev: New Man in the Kremlin’, Problems of Communism (05/06 1985), 1–23Google Scholar; ‘Can Gorbachev Make a Difference?’ Detente, 3 (05 1985)Google Scholar; ‘Change in the USSR’, Foreign Affairs (Summer 1986), 1048–65Google Scholar; ‘Change in the USSR: Developments and Prospects’, World Policy Journal, 4 (1986–1987), 55–87Google Scholar; ‘The Soviet Leadership and the Struggle for Political Reform’, The Harriman Institute Forum, 1, No. 4 (04 1988), 1–8Google Scholar. However, Professor Brown was severely taken to task in a series of readers' letters published in the Times Literary Supplement between 15 May and 10 July 1987. In the light of subsequent events they make interesting reading.

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