Word: reformer
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Those stories might be true, but they are not necessary to explain Gorbachev's retreat. He is a conservative, and all his instincts must have warned him that if he swapped his stop-and-go style of reform for a plunge into a free market, there was no way to know what might happen. He could not bring himself to risk everything, including the destruction of communism...
...developments apparently mobilized the army and its allies in the giant military-industrial production network. After 46 representatives of eight defense-related ministries signed an open letter last September warning that new laws threatened to destroy the defense industry, Gorbachev changed course. He dropped the radical 500-day economic reform plan he had praised earlier and adopted still another muddled plan for piecemeal changes...
...series of unexplained military maneuvers around Moscow last fall fueled rumors that the army had used scare tactics to pressure Gorbachev. A much repeated story speaks of a tense meeting of the Communist Party Politburo at which the President was forced to back away from economic reform and crack down on separatism...
...chill on investors from abroad by accusing Westerners of plotting to flood the Soviet market with billions of rubles, wreck the economy and ultimately overthrow Gorbachev. Two weeks ago, the daily Moskovsky Komsomolets reported that Moscow party chief Yuri Prokofiev had said, "Gorbachev was forced to refuse the ((radical reform)) program at nighttime sessions of the Politburo...
That prediction is almost a certainty because neither of Gorbachev's crushing problems is about to go away. The referendum will do nothing to force the separatist republics to relent, and without basic reform the economy can only deteriorate. After withdrawing 50- and 100-ruble notes from circulation and setting the KGB to examining the books of offices with foreign connections, the government's next "reform" will be to raise prices on consumer goods an average...