Word: perestroikas
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...neither Reagan nor the Pope could anticipate the accession of a Soviet leader like Mikhail Gorbachev, the father of glasnost and perestroika; his efforts at reform unleashed powerful forces that spun out of his control and led to the breakup of the Soviet Union. The Washington-Vatican alliance "didn't cause the fall of communism," observes a U.S. official familiar with the details of the plot to keep Solidarity alive. "Like all great and lucky leaders, the Pope and the President exploited the forces of history to their own ends...
During the Gorbachev era, political life in Moscow crackled with all the raw power of a performance of Boris Godunov. The Soviet leader's personality clashes with Russian populist Boris Yeltsin, their pendulum swings from angry betrayal to wary reconciliation, were as important for the process of perestroika as finding the right mechanisms for a free-market economy. Then came the high drama of the August putsch and the final unraveling of the union. Given his turbulent career, the Soviet leader probably never suspected that everything would come tumbling down just because three republic leaders decided to hold a weekend...
...rejection of Gorbachev in the new Commonwealth -- still surprising to many Westerners -- is due mostly to his unfulfilled promises. He spoke constantly of democracy but clung to the power and bureaucracy of the Communist Party, which he headed long after it had been revealed as the main obstacle to perestroika, his plan for restructuring. Even when the party resorted to violence against him in the aborted coup last August, Gorbachev publicly pledged his loyalty to it. That was the moment at which Yeltsin succeeded to Gorbachev's authority and pushed him to close down the party...
Most dismaying of all to the majority of Soviet people, Gorbachev did not deliver on his promise that perestroika would bring efficiency to the socialist system and prosperity to the country. Instead, as he admitted last week, "the old system fell apart even before the new system began to work." In fact, there was no new system. In September 1990 he announced he favored the so-called 500-Day Plan for a sudden switch to a free-market system. But then he lost his nerve and reneged, opting for a "compromise" between dramatic change and another round of tentative tinkering...
...government to deliver Yeltsin's version of reform. As a first step, most prices are to be freed from government control this week, although the cost of basics like bread, milk, salt, medicine and vodka will still be regulated. The results may be no more satisfactory than those of perestroika because many state-run monopolies, including wholesale and retail suppliers, retain their paralyzing grip on the distribution system. With hyperinflation a real threat, much of the population feels menaced by poverty as well as hunger this winter...