PERESTROIKA

noun Also written perestroyka (Politics) The 'restructuring' or reform of the economic and political system in the Soviet Union, first proposed in 1979 and actively promoted under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev from 1985 onwards. Hence any fundamental reorganization or reform, especially of a socialist society. Etymology: A direct borrowing from Russian perestroyka, literally 'rebuilding, restructuring'. The same Russian word had been used within the Soviet Union to refer to the electrification programme of the twenties. History and Usage: The policy of perestroika in the Soviet Union evolved out of an awareness among the central leadership of the deep economic and social crisis that the country seemed to be facing at the very end of the seventies, with widespread corruption, excessive bureaucracy, and industrial stagnation as some of its principal symptoms. The problem was the subject of a series of decisions of the Central Committee of the CPSU in April 1979; these were reported to the 26th Party Congress by Leonid Brezhnev, who said: It is a question of restructuring--yes, this was not a slip of the tongue, I said restructuring--many sectors and areas of ideological work. Despite this announcement, little actual progress was made towards perestroika until 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power and made it a central tenet (along with glasnost) of his policy. The Central Committee considered a detailed programme for perestroika in April 1985, based on a careful analysis of the state of the economy. This became the basis for a plan announced by Mikhail Gorbachev at the 27th Party Congress in February-March 1986. This Congress was unique in the history of CPSU Congresses for its open criticism of Soviet industry, bureaucracy, and society, and its call to radical change. Gorbachev himself saw perestroika as nothing less than a new revolution; as he wrote in his book Perestroika (1987): In the spring of 1985, the Party put this task on the agenda. The gravity of accumulated and emerging problems, and the delay in their understanding and solution necessitated acting in a revolutionary way and proclaiming a revolutionary overhaul of society. Perestroika is a revolutionary process for it is a jump forward in the development of socialism. Perestroika was widely discussed in the West at the time when it was first announced, and was generally seen as a sign of real change in Soviet society, especially since it was to be based on democratization. However, it proved less popular within the Soviet Union, where it seemed to make little difference to the availability of goods and even, some people argued, made life harder for the ordinary citizen. By the early nineties perestroika had become the focus for a head-on fight between Mr Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, leader of the Russian Federation, who declared ideological war on the administration which had brought in the policy of perestroika. Meanwhile perestroika had become a byword in English for any radical reform, especially of a socialist country or system; one sign of the word's acceptance into the language was the fact that it soon acquired the derivative perestroikan (an adjective and noun). Were Czechoslovakia to catch perestroika fever as strongly as Poland and Hungary, the troika could embark on a path that would seriously threaten Moscow's strategic interests. Guardian 29 July 1989, p. 8 Mr Kohl, the clever tactician who substitutes instinct for any lack of intellect is playing a hand of fear: a fear that perestroika could soon be over and with it the Soviet willingness to accept a new order of democracy in Europe. European 25-27 May 1990, p. 9 Yesterday's NEC decision to reduce the clout of the union block vote at conference was a valuable if partial and belated contribution. But as Frank Field knows, you can't get perestroika overnight, particularly when your route to reform requires the assent of the very institutions which need reforming. Guardian 28 June 1990, p. 18