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Gorbachev and the Soviet future
Review Article
Fast Forward, Rewind: Politics in the Gorbachev Era
Stephen White, Gorbachev in Power (Cambridge sity Press, 1990); viii + 268 pp.
and New York: Cambridge
Univer-
Tatyana Zaslavskaya, The Second Socialist Revolution: An Alternative Soviet Strateg (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990); xx f 241 pp. Tatyana Zaslavskaya, Yanowitch (Armonk,
A Voice of Reform,
N.Y.: ME.
Sharpe,
edited, with an Introduction 1989); xix + 191 pp.
by Murray
Lawrence W. Lerner and Donald W. Trcadgold, eds., Gorbachev and the Soviet Future (Boulder and London: Wcstvicw Press, 1988); vii + 284 pp. Ronald J. frill and Jan Ake Dcllcnbrant, UK: Edward Elgar, 1989); 234 pp.
cds., Gorbachev and Perestroika
(Aldcrshot,
What to make ol’ the tumultuous, ongoing transformation of the USSR since the advent oTGorbachcv? What to make of the problems of Sovietology that have arisen in this age of sharp discontinuity’ ? We arc encouraged, conli~scd, somctimcs dishcartcncd-but challenged by the task of making sense of a flood or events. It may all still seem “new,” this unruly Soviet politics, but it is sobering to think that collcgc graduates of the class of 1985, who came in the autumn OF that year to sit as graduate students at the collective Tcet of practitioners of the Sovietological enterprise, have now complctcd six years of graduate study: some are already certilied as PhDs, others nearing dissertation defenses, yet others dclaycd by the thesis topic that has rel’used to stand still since it was chosen and approved. Many of us- mature specialists -were “formed” in the 18 years of Brezhnevian stability, accustomed, at least in the study of Soviet domestic affairs, to investigating and mapping incremental change, and/or to detecting and explicating long-term trends which seemed to bode ill for the Soviet economy, polity, society, but that never brought on any crisis. The architecture of the system-Stalin’s lasting legacy lo his successors --somehow always scemcd adequate to contain such trends, to blunt, via repression (and, perhaps, partial accommodation), their potential for broad destabilization. %tUUlFS IN COLIPAIL\l-IkX ~o!d~t~NlSsl, vol..XXV, 0039-3592/92/01 0079-09 SO3.00 0
1992 Utlivcrsity
No. I, bL\RCII 1992, 79-87
of California
Fast Forward, Rewind: Politics in the Gorbachev Era
Stephen White, Gorbachev in Power (Cambridge sity Press, 1990); viii + 268 pp.
and New York: Cambridge
Univer-
Tatyana Zaslavskaya, The Second Socialist Revolution: An Alternative Soviet Strateg (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990); xx f 241 pp. Tatyana Zaslavskaya, Yanowitch (Armonk,
A Voice of Reform,
N.Y.: ME.
Sharpe,
edited, with an Introduction 1989); xix + 191 pp.
by Murray
Lawrence W. Lerner and Donald W. Trcadgold, eds., Gorbachev and the Soviet Future (Boulder and London: Wcstvicw Press, 1988); vii + 284 pp. Ronald J. frill and Jan Ake Dcllcnbrant, UK: Edward Elgar, 1989); 234 pp.
cds., Gorbachev and Perestroika
(Aldcrshot,
What to make ol’ the tumultuous, ongoing transformation of the USSR since the advent oTGorbachcv? What to make of the problems of Sovietology that have arisen in this age of sharp discontinuity’ ? We arc encouraged, conli~scd, somctimcs dishcartcncd-but challenged by the task of making sense of a flood or events. It may all still seem “new,” this unruly Soviet politics, but it is sobering to think that collcgc graduates of the class of 1985, who came in the autumn OF that year to sit as graduate students at the collective Tcet of practitioners of the Sovietological enterprise, have now complctcd six years of graduate study: some are already certilied as PhDs, others nearing dissertation defenses, yet others dclaycd by the thesis topic that has rel’used to stand still since it was chosen and approved. Many of us- mature specialists -were “formed” in the 18 years of Brezhnevian stability, accustomed, at least in the study of Soviet domestic affairs, to investigating and mapping incremental change, and/or to detecting and explicating long-term trends which seemed to bode ill for the Soviet economy, polity, society, but that never brought on any crisis. The architecture of the system-Stalin’s lasting legacy lo his successors --somehow always scemcd adequate to contain such trends, to blunt, via repression (and, perhaps, partial accommodation), their potential for broad destabilization. %tUUlFS IN COLIPAIL\l-IkX ~o!d~t~NlSsl, vol..XXV, 0039-3592/92/01 0079-09 SO3.00 0
1992 Utlivcrsity
No. I, bL\RCII 1992, 79-87
of California