Post-Perestroika: Revolution from Above v. Revolution from Below

Abstract

The political changes that have occurred in the Soviet Union since the elections of the early spring of 1990 to local and republican soviets, and which were greatly accelerated by the failed conservative coup of 19–21 August, have brought to a close the ‘perestroika chapter’ of Soviet history initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev. It is no longer a question of ‘restructuring’ the old economic system but of replacing it wholesale by what is termed a ‘normal’, that is, capitalist, economy. Those in power no longer go by the name of communists — the party has been banned by executive decree — but call themselves ‘democrats’.