RUSSIA: Looking Back on Perestroika

By Kester Kenn Klomegah Reprint | | Print |

Kester Kenn Klomegah

MOSCOW, Mar 6 2006 (IPS) - The publication of a book on perestroika by Mikhail Gorbachev 21 years after he launched it has led to a new debate – and more misgivings – about the restructuring.

The reception to the book could be as cold as the reception to a speech on the book and perestroika he gave at an event at the Russian University of Peoples’ Friendship last month.

“It’s important to understand perestroika as an urgent necessity arising from profound processes of development of our society at the time,” he said.

“The important thing was to translate the policy into the everyday life of the people, and that was indeed the beginning of the present democratic reforms.” He said he wrote the book following events to mark the 20th anniversary of the launch of perestroika last year.

But he expressed regret that he could not carry out his new political initiative to the logical end. “There remains the problem of understanding perestroika, and it needs to be decided where we should go because the radical liberal course would be the wrong option for us,” he said.

Gorbachev’s speech drew hardly any applause. Most Russians are skeptical about the restructuring, and believe his reforms cost Russia its superpower status.

A survey by the Russian Academy of Sciences shows that only 22 percent have a positive opinion of the reforms initiated by Gorbachev, while 56 percent were critical of his policy.

“I might say that there are two diametrically opposed types of stereotypes about perestroika,” lecturer at the mass communications department at the Russian University, and researcher on Gorbachev’s era Dr. Elena A. Ivanova told IPS.

“The first group we can call western stereotypes,” she said. “Many people in the west respect Mr. Gorbachev and his political activity for ushering in dynamic change and reforms.”

But within Russia stereotypes about perestroika are the opposite. “Many of us, especially elder generations, view Gorbachev’s reform and their consequences in the society as deprivation and poverty, collapse of families and inaccessibility to free welfare services,” she said.

Perestroika for many Soviet citizens could be equated to death because it brought political conflicts and endless bloody wars in the territories of the former Soviet republics, and the physical, moral and intellectual demise of the Soviet past, she said.

“Russia is now at the crossroads, people are making choices and there are still many who would prefer the Soviet system which once guaranteed their basic lives,” researcher on U.S.-Russia relations at the Russian Academy of Sciences Dr. Michael Vishnevsky told IPS.

“But Gorbachev’s perestroika had changed that for them,” he said. “What’s happening is democracy by and for a particular class of people, which is why Russians regard perestroika as a great political mistake. This is reflected in their mood and sentiments even till today.”

“We are witnessing a superficial victory for modern democracy, and the country is still experiencing the effects of the political transition from perestroika,” Vishnevsky said.

But not everybody despairs. “The situation that had arisen in the late 1990s was dictated by the political conditions in the Soviet Union, and perestroika provided some basis for the crucial change,” assistant dean at the Faculty of Political Science at the Russian University Prof Dmitry Slizovsky told IPS. “And the maturity shown by Gorbachev to step aside for that natural change to occur was commendable.”

Slizovsky called perestroika a political tragedy of the Soviet era that has contributed to progress the world over.