Carl Linden
Abstract: Gorbachev’s platform for reform is to shift Soviet resources from the military-industrial economy to the civilian-consumer economy, adopting Western economic success without threatening party control. He faces a two front struggle, at home and abroad. Domestically, Gorbachev leads a new generation of politicians, but still has to appease conservative actors to prevent his ousting. He advocates a policy of glasnost, translated to “publicity,” to hold the nomenklatura accountable to greater public pressures. However, he must be careful not to provoke a challenge to his power while attempting to change the institutional system. He supports seemingly contradictory centralization measures to defuse criticism from conservatives: he increased economic ministerial oversight while also loosening controls over local productive and service enterprises, justified as a neo-NEP (New Economic Policy); he supports coercive labor-discipline from the top, but also freer rein to local productive units to seek profit; he uses antagonistic rhetoric when speaking about the US, but seeks to solve disputes with diplomatic negotiations. Furthermore, he blames the Soviet economic and technological stagnation on past leadership, but carefully avoids directly targeting the party itself or Lenin. Additionally, as Gorbachev hopes to focus the party on economics over politics, he hopes glasnost will help transform the party’s authority from arbitrarily to a law-regulated. Doing so will help solidify and protect his reforms against future successors and keep the Soviet Union focused on internal policies rather than external.
Key words: Gorbachev, Brezhnev, Khrushchev, Glasnost, Perestroika, Soviet Union, USSR, Communism, Reform
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