To what extent was perestroika little more than a Soviet form of democratization?

Authors Avatar

To what extent was perestroika little more than a Soviet form of democratization?

Edward Skinner (0349801)

Gorbachev became the Soviet leader on March the 11th, 1985. He became President of the world’s second super power, with a population of 265 million, when it was facing three fundamental problems. These were:

  1. An aging and largely corrupt leadership.
  2. A society which was low on morale.
  3. An economy which was in sharp decline.

Average citizens in the USSR consumed a third of the goods and services, and lived in housing one seventh of the area of their American counterparts. This led to a sharp declined in morale resulting in widespread corruption and crime. Many people turned to vodka in order to feel better, and it is estimated alcoholism alone resulted in a 10% loss of productivity. The challenge for Gorbachev was to rectify all these problems. This he attempted through various fundamental changes. I will begin by examining these reforms, and then move on to gauging how far these reforms can be thought of as being Soviet democratization.

The reforms began almost immediately when Gorbachev took office. Between 1985 and 1986, Gorbachev introduced legislation aimed at cutting alcoholism and corruption. These campaigns began on the 5th of April, 1985. In May of the same year, this drive to cut alcoholism closed off licenses, reduced hours of sale and raised prices. Production was cut by 50% in the state run factories. By 1987 sales of alcoholic spirits were down to 35.7 billion rubles from 51 billion rubles (about 16% of total retail sales) in 1984. Whilst it may seem the policy was successful, it deprived retail outlets of billions of rubles and was not a popular policy with the people. The system was destined to fail, and the campaign was abandoned in 1988, prompting alcohol sales to increase by 39% the following year.

The second stage of the reforms took place between 1987 and 1989. These were not economic reforms, instead they were more social. The aims of these were to galvanise what was low morale amongst the people. These early reforms, know as “glasnost”, or openness, had a major impact on the then cultural and scientific leaders of the day. These people, consisting of writers, artists, journalists, natural and social scientists, academics and those in similar occupations, were known as the “intelligentsia”. They began, cautiously at first, to take advantage of their new found freedom of expression. In the early days of Gorbachev’s leadership, he found strong support from the intelligentsia who were grateful to him for his glasnost based policies. However, this support was not to last despite Gorbachev’s attempts to buy their support with middle class goods and promises.

Join now!

However it is not possible to understand glasnost without reference being made to the Chernobyl disaster of April 1986. Whilst there is never a good time for a disaster of that scale to occur, for Gorbachev it could not have happened at a worse time. Just while he was carefully orchestrating the opening up of the Soviet media, an event happened to expose for all to see just how far the USSR had to come regards glasnost compared to the West. Chernobyl caught fire shortly after midnight on the 26th of April 1986. The first reports in the West began ...

This is a preview of the whole essay