Gorbachev Comes to Power: Glasnost and Perestroika
Gorbachev became general secretary in March 1985 and set out to reform a system that turned out not to be reformable. He was fifty-four and the first Soviet leader born after the revolution, following three men who had died in office in twenty-eight months. The economy he inherited was growing at close to zero, dependent on oil prices that collapsed in 1986, spending perhaps a fifth of its output on the military, and unable to feed itself. His first programme was acceleration and an anti-alcohol campaign that cut state revenue sharply and produced a shortage of sugar. Glasnost — openness — began as an instrument rather than a principle: he could not move the bureaucracy without publicity, so the press was allowed to report failures. Chernobyl in April 1986, and the three weeks of official silence that followed, convinced him that the instrument had to be genuine. What was then published within four years included Solzhenitsyn, Orwell, the truth about the purges, the Molotov-Ribbentrop protocols and the Katyn massacre. Perestroika, the restructuring of the economy, half-liberalised prices and enterprises and produced neither plan nor market. The political reforms of 1988 and 1989 created a partly elected congress whose sessions were televised, and the Baltic republics used it. He refused to use force to hold the bloc together in 1989 and largely refused it at home. The Soviet Union dissolved in December 1991 and he resigned. His own summary in retirement was that he had known the country had to change and had not known that it would come apart. He remains far more admired outside Russia than inside it, where he polls as the man who lost an empire and the savings of everyone who had any.
- Year: 1985 CE
- Category: Political
