Word: perestroika
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...former party leader in the industrial city of Sverdlovsk, Yeltsin was brought to Moscow by Gorbachev in 1985 and quickly established himself as a supersalesman of perestroika (restructuring), Gorbachev's plan to modernize the Soviet economy. To the delight of ordinary Muscovites, he became a one-man consumer-protection agency, stopping off in stores to complain about poor- quality merchandise, calling Moscow's famed subway unsafe and criticizing state contractors for falling behind in constructing new housing. But his blunt language and grandstanding earned him enemies. Explains Marshall Goldman, associate director of Harvard's Russian Research Center: "People came...
Yeltsin grew a little too outspoken at a meeting of the policymaking Central Committee in late October. Interrupting the agenda, the Moscow party chief delivered a harangue accusing senior leaders of obstructing his efforts to bring about perestroika. Exactly what he said remains unclear. Gorbachev, in his attack on Yeltsin last week, said that Yeltsin had "in fact sought to call into question the Communist Party's work on restructuring and the character of changes and went as far as to say that restructuring was giving nothing to the people." Gorbachev implied that Yeltsin brought up matters relating...
...such contract teams, citing a family in the Brest region of Belorussia that managed to increase milk yields per cow from 2,917 kilograms to 5,580 kilograms in only two years. But so far the Kremlin cannot point to well-stocked supermarket shelves as a positive result of perestroika policies...
...termed glasnost. Chinese Kremlin watchers were stunned when Gorbachev rebuked at least 16 ministers and party officials by name in his June speech to the Central Committee plenum. And nothing in China can quite compare with Soviet TV shows like Good Evening, Moscow and Dialogue, which mix news of perestroika with round-table discussions. A recent broadcast pitted squirming agricultural officials against incensed consumers, who waved bags of tasteless, undersized green apples at the camera and demanded to know why anyone even bothered to - grow them. Says a Chinese economist: "In his policy of glasnost and political restructuring, Gorbachev...
Gorbachev so far appears confident that expectations about perestroika can be kept in check without imposing rigid limits. But the Soviet Union, like China, may find that the process of reform cannot keep pace with public demands for more democracy. A poll taken by the China Social Survey System in cities across the country in July showed that 93.8% of respondents believed it was necessary to reform the political structure. When the Novosti press agency surveyed a sample group of Moscow factory workers after the Central Committee plenum last June for their views on democratization and glasnost, 83% said neither...