Perestroika

Abstract

The very concept of perestroika in its contemporary political and socioeconomic interpretation has emerged in the USSR in connection with the formation of new policies and new thinking, initiated at the Plenary Meeting of the CPSU Central Committee in April 1985. The main guidelines of perestroika were charted by the 27th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and further developed in the resolutions of the subsequent Plenary Meetings of the CPSU Central Committee and by the 19th All-Union Party Conference in 1988. The concept of perestroika is diametrically opposite to the ideas of improving or amending which, in effect, characterize partial evolutionary changes, half-measures. In contrast, perestroika embodies qualitative, cardinal changes, those changes being complete, comprehensive rather than partial. Perestroika is a revolutionary process of transformation in society.