Word: gorbachevized
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...these turbulent and momentous events and phenomena, however, only the ascension of Gorbachev to the Soviet leadership could eventually rival for long-range importance to the world the sweeping changes Deng is pushing through in China. But for all the panache he displayed on taking power and all the headlines and television time he and Reagan commanded at the summit, Gorbachev's impact on history by year's end was still far more potential than actual. The freshness and vigor of his personal style far outweighed the importance of any changes he had made in Soviet foreign or domestic policy...
...Gorbachev, Deng and the heads of almost every Marxist country face the same fundamental problem. In a 1984 interview with the Italian Communist daily L'Unità, Hu Yaobang, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, phrased it this way: "Since the October Revolution [of 1917, which enthroned Soviet Marxism], more than 60 years have passed. How is it that many socialist countries have not been able to overtake capitalist ones in terms of development? What was it that did not work...
...Gorbachev has been unsparing in his criticisms of Soviet economic performance. "You squander countless resources in every industry," he told party workers in Leningrad last May. But so far he has been unwilling to modify in any essential way the system of centralized state control of every aspect of economic life fashioned by Joseph Stalin; he has been trying only to make it work better. While promising to "restructure" the economy, Gorbachev pointedly avoids using the word reform, apparently because it implies a more drastic change than any he is ready to contemplate...
...practice, Gorbachev's program so far consists largely of public scolding of inefficient industry managers and incessant calls for "discipline" and "imaginative, honest and conscientious work from every individual, from worker to minister." His most striking measure to improve productivity has been to crack down on alcoholism by restricting production and consumption of vodka and other spirits...
...Gorbachev is extending experiments to give selected industrial and farm managers slightly greater freedom in pricing and production decisions. His closest economic adviser, Abel Aganbegyan, has called for a reallocation of investments to modernize factories rather than build new ones and to improve the quality of products. But this rechanneling is to be carried out by the central planners. So, as Gorbachev suggested in his August interview with TIME, his program rather contradictorily appears to call for a loosening of state control in some areas and a tightening in others--at the same time...