To what extent was perestroika little more than a Soviet form of democratisation
To what extent was perestroika little more than a Soviet form of democratisation? The Soviet economy had been on the rise since the very days of the revolution, apart from wartime periods, and continued to do so under Brezhnev’s rule – to a point. The Soviet Union had become one of the two world superpowers. In the beginning of the 1980s the soviet people enjoyed free healthcare, free schooling, modestly priced housing and the right to work (1). The last years of the Brezhnev era, however, saw the economic growth slowing down to the point, that when Mikhail Gorbachev inherited the Soviet leadership in 1985, the economy had sagging rates of industrial and agricultural output. The Soviet Union had fallen behind the western countries in economic growth, industrial and agricultural output, as well as the living standards of the people. ... Perestroika, introduced by Gorbachev in the late 1980s was to lead the USSR to a new era of economic growth as well as a more decentralized way of governing. To accelerate the perestroika he also introduced glasnost, which was to guarantee more transparency within the CPSU and a partial freedom of press. ... Even before his nomination to the leadership of the Communist Party and finally to the general secretaryship and presidium of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev had made remarks on the need for “self-sufficiency in enterprise management and better discipline on the shop floor” (2). He called for greater entrepreneurship amongst the Soviet people, modernisation of the economy and the extension of popular self-government (3). ... The roots of the young new leader obviously made him a more liberal, humanist figure, and a reformist to the conservative Soviet system. Being born and raised in the periphery, the Ukrainian countryside, Gorbachev had also an interest towards the “forgotten” regions of the Soviet Union. During the early months of his presidency he would personally visit factories and production sites throughout the country, even in the remote regions that no other Soviet leader had ever visited before him. ... In 1986 Gorbachev begun sketching proposals for a reform, perestroika, which he presented to a plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in June 1987 (7).