Gorbachev’s Measures (1931-2022) — glasnost and perestroika — in the USSR intended to change the scenario of open repression against the workers, guaranteeing greater freedom to them but also to the existing oppositions within the Communist Party bureaucracy itself. The intent of this was to carry out a decentralization of the decisions that were in the hands of the nomenklatura.
Thus, perestroika sought economic and social restructuring, and glasnost, to effect transparency in political decisions in the USSR. However, what was meant to be a crack disrupted the entire Soviet system, which came to an end in 1991.
Read more: Mikhail Gorbachev — was a Russian politician who was marked as the last Soviet ruler
Topics of this article
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Under Gorbachev, the Soviet leader initiated structural reforms in the USSR.
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Two measures were perestroika and glasnost.
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Perestroika aimed to change the economic and social foundations of the nation.
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Glasnost proposed the fight against authoritarianism and lack of freedom.
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The Soviet system, however, did not support these and other movements that emerged, entering into dissolution in 1991, after Gorbachev’s resignation.
Video lesson on perestroika and glasnost
What were perestroika and glasnost?
The main characteristics of the internal policy of the Gorbachev government were related to two Russian words that indicated attempts to change the Soviet system: perestroika and glasnost.
In Russian, perestroika means “restructuring”. The use of the word was intended to indicate the paths to be traced in order to carry out structural changes in the economy and society soviet. The economy of the USSR did not reach, in the 1970s and 1980s, the high rates of economic growth seen in previous times.
The situation was the result of the exhaustion of the forms of Soviet social organization, in which political and economic centralization in the State and in the Communist Party prevented the development of mechanisms that would guarantee the increase of productivity.
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already the word glasnost has the meaning “transparency” and was used to represent the process of political openness that Gorbachev and the group of Soviet bureaucrats who assisted him intended to operate. It was an attempt to give a little transparency to political decision-making mechanisms of the USSR, rigidly governed by the nomenklatura, the class of bureaucrats that controlled Soviet society.
Perestroika and glasnost were thus an attempt by Mikhail Gorbachev to put an end to the crisis that Soviet society was going through. And this crisis was related to the very development of the USSR.
Read more: Stalinism — regime carried out profound transformations in the USSR and relentless persecution of its opponents
Was the Soviet Union communist or socialist?
What happened in the USSR was not socialism or communism, but a capitalism not based on private property. Soviet capitalism was based on state ownership. The two types of capitalism are similar in that they maintain the economic and social exploitation of the working class as the basis of their functioning.
In privately owned capitalism, the exploiting class is usually associated with the bourgeoisie. In state-owned capitalism, the exploiting class is the state bureaucracy. In both types, workers are removed from control of the means of production and the work process.
Gorbachev intended, with perestroika and glasnost, to solve the crisis that the USSR was going through, but he was unable to contain the disintegration of the Soviet system. In 1991, the USSR ended. And the kind of capitalism developed in the US sphere of influence appeared to the world as the victorious of a dispute that marked the 20th century.
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Tales dos Santos
History teacher