Gorbachevizm

Abstract

At the time of writing (February 1991), it begins to look as though the era of perestroika is going into decline. Individual republics, particularly in the Baltic region, wish to go their own way. This centrifugal tendency has provoked a reaction from the centre, and there are signs that the military and the KGB are exerting an increasing influence on Gorbachev’s policies. National unrest, economic chaos, the rise in crime, the breakdown in law and order, to say nothing of widespread dissatisfaction with perestroika among the majority of ordinary Soviet citizens, and strong, almost universal, dislike of Gorbachev himself, have combined to render meaningless programmes based on a premise of Union-wide cooperation and effort and directed towards a collectivist solution of the Soviet Union’s profound social, economic and environmental problems. From the perspective of anyone who agrees with Zinoviev’s analysis of Soviet society, this development was entirely predictable.