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Perestroika ( ; links=no) was a political reform movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) during the late 1980s, widely associated with CPSU general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and his glasnost (meaning "transparency") policy reform. The literal meaning of perestroika is "restructuring," referring to the restructuring of the political economy of the Soviet Union in an attempt to end the Era of Stagnation.
Perestroika allowed more independent actions from various ministries and introduced many Market economy-like reforms. The purported goal of perestroika was not to end the planned economy, but rather to make socialism work more efficiently to better meet the needs of Soviet citizens by adopting elements of liberal economics.Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika (New York: Harper Collins, 1987), quoted in Mark Kishlansky, ed., Sources of the West: Readings in Western Civilization, 4th ed., vol. 2 (New York: Longman, 2001), p. 322. The process of implementing perestroika added to existing shortage and created political, social, and economic tensions within the Soviet Union. Furthermore, it is often blamed for the political ascent of nationalism and nationalist political parties in the constituent republics.
The motivation for perestroika stemmed from a combination of entrenched economic stagnation, political sclerosis, and growing social dissatisfaction that had taken root in the early 1980s. These conditions compelled Gorbachev and his allies to initiate broad reforms to save the system from collapse.
Gorbachev first used the term in a speech during his visit to Tolyatti in 1986. Perestroika lasted from 1985 until 1991, and is often argued to be a significant cause of the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Russian-British sociologist Mikhail Anipkin views perestroika as a revolution of quadragenarians. In his 2024 book, "Party Worker: The Rise of a Soviet Regional Leader," Anipkin argues that perestroika was desperately sought by the younger generation of Party functionaries, and Mikhail Gorbachev sensed that demand. Anipkin draws his arguments from the political biography of his own father, Alexander Anipkin, a high-ranking Party apparatchik, who enthusiastically accepted perestroika and sought to further democracy within the Party.Anipkin, Mikhail. Party Worker: The Rise of a Soviet Regional Leader (Lanham, Boulder, New York, London: The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 2025)
With respect to the foreign policy Gorbachev promoted "new political thinking:" de-ideologization of international politics, abandoning the concept of class struggle, priority of universal human interests over the interests of any class, increasing interdependence of the world, and mutual security based on political rather than military instruments. The doctrine constituted a significant shift from the previous principles of the Soviet foreign politics. "Gorbachev's New Thinking", by David Holloway, Foreign Affairs, vol.68 no.1 "Gorbachev and New Thinking in Soviet Foreign Policy, 1987-88", USDOS archive New Thinking: Foreign Policy under Gorbachev, in: Glenn E. Curtis, ed. Russia: A Country Study, Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1996. This marked the end of the Cold War.
The March 1989 election of the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union marked the first time that voters of the Soviet Union ever chose the membership of a national legislative body. The results of the election stunned the ruling elite. Throughout the country, voters crossed unopposed Communist candidates off the ballot, many of them prominent party officials, taking advantage of the nominal privilege of withholding approval of the listed candidates.
By the time of the Twenty-Eighth Party Congress in July 1990, it was clear that Gorbachev's reforms came with sweeping, unintended consequences, as nationalities of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union pulled harder than ever to break away from the Union and ultimately dismantle the Communist Party.
The program was furthered at the 27th Congress of the Communist Party in Gorbachev's report to the congress, in which he spoke about " perestroika," " uskoreniye" (acceleration), "human factor," " glasnost" (transparency), and "expansion of the khozraschyot" (accounting).
During the initial period (1985–87) of Mikhail Gorbachev's time in power, he talked about modifying central planning but did not make any truly fundamental changes ( uskoreniye; "acceleration"). Gorbachev and his team of economic advisors then introduced more fundamental reforms, which became known as perestroika (restructuring).
At the June 1987 plenary session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev presented his "basic theses," which laid the political foundation of economic reform for the remainder of the existence of the Soviet Union.
In July 1987, the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union passed the Law on State Enterprise. The law stipulated that state enterprises were free to determine output levels based on demand from consumers and other enterprises. Enterprises had to fulfil state orders, but they could dispose of the remaining output as they saw fit. However, at the same time the state still held control over the means of production for these enterprises, thus limiting their ability to enact full-cost accountability. Enterprises bought input from suppliers at negotiated contract prices. Under the law, enterprises became self-financing; that is, they had to cover expenses (wages, taxes, supplies, and debt service) through revenues. Finally, the law shifted control over the enterprise operations from ministries to elected workers' collectives. Gosplan's responsibilities were to supply general guidelines and national investment priorities.
The Law on Cooperatives, enacted in May 1988,Brooks, Karen M. (1988). The Law on Cooperatives, Retail Food Prices, and the Farm Financial Crisis in the U.S.S.R. (PDF). University of Minnesota. Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics. Retrieved on 14 August 2009. was perhaps the most radical of the economic reforms during the early part of the Gorbachev era. For the first time since Vladimir Lenin's New Economic Policy was abolished in 1928, the law permitted private ownership of businesses in the services, manufacturing, and foreign-trade sectors. The law initially imposed high taxes and employment restrictions, but it later revised these to avoid discouraging private-sector activity. Under this provision, cooperative restaurants, shops, and manufacturers became part of the Soviet scene.
Alexander Yakovlev was considered to be the intellectual force behind Gorbachev's reform program of glasnost and perestroika. In the summer of 1985, Yakovlev became head of the propaganda department of the CPSU Central Committee. He argued in favor of the reform programs and played a key role in executing those policies.
The most significant of Gorbachev's reforms in the foreign economic sector allowed foreigners to invest in the Soviet Union in the form of with Soviet ministries, state enterprises, and cooperatives. The original version of the Soviet Joint Venture Law, which went into effect in June 1987, limited foreign shares of a Soviet venture to 49 percent and required that Soviet citizens occupy the positions of chairman and general manager. After potential Western partners complained, the government revised the regulations to allow majority foreign ownership and control. Under the terms of the Joint Venture Law, the Soviet partner supplied labor, infrastructure, and a potentially large domestic market. The foreign partner supplied capital, technology, entrepreneurial expertise, and in many cases, products and services of world competitive quality.
Gorbachev's economic changes did not do much to improve the country's sluggish economy in the late 1980s. The reforms decentralized things to some extent, although price controls remained, as did the ruble's inconvertibility and most government controls over the means of production.
Reform was largely focused on industry and on cooperatives, and a limited role was given to the development of foreign investment and international trade. Factory managers were expected to meet state demands for goods, but to find their own funding. Perestroika reforms went far enough to create new bottlenecks in the Soviet economy but arguably did not go far enough to effectively streamline it.
Chinese economic reform was, by contrast, a bottom-up attempt at reform, focusing on light industry and agriculture (namely allowing peasants to sell produce grown on private holdings at market prices). Economic reforms were fostered through the development of "Special Economic Zones," designed for export and to attract foreign investment, municipally managed Township and Village Enterprises and a "dual pricing" system leading to the steady phasing out of state-dictated prices.Susan L. Shirk in , University of California, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1993. . Greater latitude was given to managers of state-owned factories, while capital was made available to them through a reformed banking system and through fiscal policies (in contrast to the fiscal anarchy and fall in revenue experienced by the Soviet government during perestroika). Perestroika was expected to lead to results such as market pricing and privately sold produce, but the Union dissolved before advanced stages were reached.
Another fundamental difference is that where perestroika was accompanied by greater political freedoms under Gorbachev's glasnost policies, Chinese economic reform has been accompanied by continued authoritarianism and a suppression of political dissidents, most notably at Tiananmen Square. Gorbachev acknowledged this difference but maintained that it was unavoidable and that perestroika would have been doomed to defeat and revanchism by the nomenklatura without glasnost, because conditions in the Soviet Union were not identical to those in China. Gorbachev cited a line from a 1986 newspaper article that he felt encapsulated this reality: "The apparatus broke Khrushchev's neck and the same thing will happen now."
Another difference is that Soviet Union faced strong secession threats from its ethnic regions and a primacy challenge by the RSFSR. Gorbachev's extension of regional autonomy removed the suppression from existing ethnic-regional tension, while Deng's reforms did not alter the tight grip of the central government on any of their autonomous regions. The Soviet Union's dual nature, part supranational union of republics and part unitary state, played a part in the difficulty of controlling the pace of restructuring, especially once the new Russian Communist Party was formed and posed a challenge to the primacy of the CPSU. Gorbachev described this process as a "parade of sovereignties" and identified it as the factor that most undermined the gradualism of restructuring and the preservation of the Soviet Union.
This report was in such high demand in Prague and Berlin that many people could not get a copy. One effect was the abrupt demand for Russian dictionaries in order to understand the content of Gorbachev's report.
In an interview with Mieczyslaw Rakowski he states the success of perestroika was impossible without glasnost.
Despite early enthusiasm, the reforms of perestroika and glasnost ultimately failed to deliver lasting improvements. By the late 1980s, the Soviet Union faced deepening economic crisis, with widespread shortages and deficits. Gorbachev’s leadership lost credibility as the public saw little tangible progress. Scholars argue that he and his advisors underestimated the severity of the crisis and the political risks of decentralization. Without a clear strategy and amid rising public disillusionment, these reforms contributed to growing instability and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union.
Early on, as perestroika was getting under way, I felt like the West might come along and find it a sensible thing to do—easing Russia's difficult transition from totalitarianism to democracy. What I had in mind in the first place, was the participation of in conversion of defense industries, the modernization of light and food industries, and Russia's inclusion on an equal-member footing in the frameworks of the international economic relations... Unlike some democrats, I did not expect "manna from Heaven," but counted on the Western statesmen to use their common sense.President George H.W. Bush continued to dodge helping the Russians and the President of Czechoslovakia, Václav Havel, laid bare the linkage for the Americans in his address to a joint session of Congress on 21 February 1990:
... I often hear the question: How can the United States of America help us today? My reply is as paradoxical as the whole of my life has been: You can help us most of all if you help the Soviet Union on its irreversible, but immensely complicated road to democracy....The sooner, the more quickly, and the more peacefully the Soviet Union begins to move along the road toward genuine political pluralism, respect for the rights of nations to their own integrity and to a working—that is a market—economy, the better it will be, not just for Czechs and Slovaks, but for the whole world.
When the United States needed help with Germany's reunification, Gorbachev proved to be instrumental in bringing solutions to the "German problem" and Bush acknowledged that "Gorbachev was moving the USSR in the right direction". Bush, in his own words, even gave praise to Gorbachev "to salute the man" in acknowledgment of the Soviet leader's role as "the architect of perestroika... who conducted the affairs of the Soviet Union with great restraint as Poland and Czechoslovakia and GDR... and other countries that achieved their independence", and who was "under extraordinary pressure at home, particularly on the economy."
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