Mikhail Gorbachev and the Politics of Perestroika

Archie Brown notes how the meaning of perestroika, a concept Gorbachev used well before he became Soviet leader, changed over time. The focus is on Gorbachev as a politician operating in the Soviet domestic context. Contrary to widespread retrospective belief, the USSR was not in crisis when Gorbachev became general secretary, and he was not forced to embark on fundamental change. He began with the aim of achieving economic reform and some political liberalization. However, from January 1987 onwards, he prioritized political reform. His thinking continued to evolve, and by 1988–89 he had embraced not only liberalization but a political pluralization that amounted to systemic change. Such, however, was the intertwining of party and state that abandonment of ‘democratic centralism’ and the Communist Party’s monopoly of power led to a crisis of Soviet statehood by 1990–91 and to perestroika’s major unintended consequence – the dissolution of the USSR. Through persuasion and negotiation, rather than violent coercion, Gorbachev had tried and failed to prevent this disintegration of the USSR. But, successfully overcoming entrenched conservative resistance, he had already used the authority of his office and his powers of persuasion to leave Russia a freer country than it had ever been.