Word: perestroika
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Gorbachev has been in power for four years. In some ways, he was running for a second term in last Sunday's election of a new Congress of People's Deputies, seeking a mandate for his three-pronged pitchfork of perestroika (economic restructuring), glasnost (openness) and demokratizatsiya (democratization). Not since the Bolsheviks were trounced in the Constituent Assembly races of November 1917 had citizens of the Soviet Union been given the chance to vote in a real national election. This time some highly visible keepers of the Bolshevik faith fared poorly. But for Gorbachev the results could...
...ousted as Moscow Communist Party boss and candidate member of the Politburo, has become a symbol of the opportunities and obstacles that Gorbachev now faces. Yeltsin's triumph, along with the defeat of party hacks from Siberia to Lithuania, represented a rousing endorsement of Gorbachev's vision of perestroika. But it also represented a feisty revolt against the failure of his reforms to improve the harsh realities of Soviet life...
...perestroika, Gorbachev has made into a mantra the phrase "There is no alternative." Even Ligachev and the conservatives, wary as they are about the mayhem being done to Marxism, agree that something must be done. As Gorbachev well knows, one of the safeguards of perestroika is its links to glasnost: now that the economy's inherent flaws have been aired, it is impossible to retreat and pretend once again not to see them. "The notion that Ligachev or anyone else can bring perestroika to a halt now simply does not square with reality," says Soviet economist Gavril Popov. "Empty store...
This does not mean that Gorbachev will prevail or even endure. Perestroika has committed one of the most dangerous sins in politics: it has raised expectations more than living standards. Although the reforms Gorbachev has wrought can never be completely reversed, they could be suppressed by a retrograde regime. The result would be a surly Soviet Union that could threaten the world with its bulk and brawn while it seethed about the sclerotic state of its Third World economy and its inability to escape the tentacles of an ideology that does not satisfy the basic needs of 285 million people...
...alternative is not that perestroika might suddenly be pronounced a success -- even the irrepressible Boris Yeltsin should avoid holding his breath -- but that the reforms will continue. For both the Soviets and those destined to coexist with them, that is the important thing. Each new manifestation of democracy, each new opportunity for individual enterprise, each new opening for free thought and expression helps ease the repressive relationship between the Soviet state and its population. That, in turn, should make the new U.S.S.R. a far less threatening world citizen. Last week's election was another act in a lengthy drama that...