Word: sovietism
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...most somber note at the session was struck in assessing the state of the Soviet Union. Soviet panelist Andranik Migranyan, senior research fellow at Moscow's Institute of Economics of the World Socialist System, warned that after five years of perestroika, "our economists say we have yet to hit the bottom. The people are acutely aware of the gap between words and deeds by the government. We feel we might be entering a period of chaos." Already, Migranyan warned, a loose coalition of forces -- disgruntled members of labor bureaucracies, ethnic Russian nationalists and members of the Communist elite, or nomenklatura...
...Gorbachev's unprecedented attempt to democratize Communism and his drive for economic reform or perestroika have brought the Soviet Union to the brink of breakdown. As popular frustration rises, recourse to some form of more autocratic rule -- either under Gorbachev or a successor -- is increasingly possible...
...Instability is likely to prevail in Eastern Europe for years to come, but for all its problems, the region has a far better chance of building democratic institutions and a market economy than the Soviet Union, which lags decades behind its former satellites...
According to Migranyan, the unsettling change in climate is partly due to Gorbachev's democratizing efforts. Those measures have permitted grass-roots resistance to unpopular reforms. "The Soviet Union," said Migranyan, "is acting like a democracy without really being one." Above all, said Migranyan, his country needed a model to make the transition from state-owned to free- market economy. "Nobody knows how to do it," he said, including Gorbachev, whose government lacks "conceptual ideas and clarity about what to do." Migranyan said the short-term remedy was either food or force. As long as there was sausage...
Moisi countered by arguing that for the West, a measure of democracy in the Soviet Union was "a guarantee against the return of Soviet imperialism." He told Migranyan, "You are calling on the West to help you, but there will be linkage between the amount of help you will receive and the image you transmit of yourselves." Moisi's message: Democracy pays, even if it poses problems for Eastern Europe's reformers. Conceded Migranyan: "This is the key problem for Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union...