What was perestroika and which soviet leader backed it

Petersburg then known as Leningrad , in which he publicly criticized the inefficient economic system of the Soviet Union , making him the first Communist leader to do so. This was followed by a February speech to the Communist Party Congress, in which he expanded upon the need for political and economic restructuring, or perestroika, and called for a new era of transparency and openness, or glasnost. But by , these early attempts at reform had achieved little, and Gorbachev embarked on a more ambitious program.

Gorbachev loosened centralized control of many businesses, allowing some farmers and manufacturers to decide for themselves which products to make, how many to produce, and what to charge for them. This incentivized them to aim for profits, but it also went against the strict price controls that had been the bedrock of Soviet economic policies. It was a move that rankled many high-ranking officials who had previously headed these powerful central committees.

In May , Gorbachev introduced a new policy that allowed for the creation of limited co-operative businesses within the Soviet Union, which led to the rise of privately owned stores, restaurants and manufacturers.

Not since the short-lived New Economic Policy of Vladimir Lenin , instituted in after the Russian civil war, had aspects of free-market capitalism been permitted in the U. But even here, Gorbachev tread lightly. Many of these new co-ops became the basis of the oligarchical system that continues to control power in Russia today. Gorbachev also peeled back restrictions on foreign trade, streamlining processes to allow manufacturers and local government agencies to bypass the previously stifling bureaucratic system of the central government.

He encouraged Western investment, although he later reversed his original policy, which called for these new business ventures to be majority Russian-owned and operated. He also showed initial restraint when laborers began to push for increased protections and rights, with thousands protesting the wild inefficiencies of the Soviet coal industry.

But he again reversed course when faced with pressure from hardliners after a massive strike by , miners in While Gorbachev had instituted these reforms to jumpstart the sluggish Soviet economy, many of them had the opposite effect.

The agricultural sector, for example, had provided food at low cost thanks to decades of heavy government subsidies. Now, it could charge higher prices in the marketplace — prices many Soviets could not afford. Government spending and Soviet debt skyrocketed, and pushes by workers for higher wages led to dangerous inflation.

If Gorbachev faced opposition from the entrenched hardliners that he was moving too far, too fast, he was criticized for doing just the opposite by others. Some liberals called for full-fledged abolishment of central planning committees entirely, which Gorbachev resisted.

As reforms under glasnost revealed both the horrors of the Soviet past, and its present-day inefficiencies, Gorbachev moved to remake much of the political system of the U. At a Party meeting in , he pushed through measures calling for the first truly democratic elections since the Russian Revolution of Hardliners who supported this initially believed that the date for these elections would be far enough in the future that they could control the process.

Instead, Gorbachev announced that they would be held just months later. While some Communist Party members reserved many of the seats for themselves, other hardliners went down to defeat at the ballot box to liberal reformers. Former dissidents and prisoners, including Nobel laureate physicist and activist Andrei Sakharov , were elected as candidates waged Western-style campaigns. When the new Congress met for its first session in May , newspapers, television and radio stations — newly empowered by the lifting of press restrictions under glasnost — devoted hours of time to the meetings, which featured open conflict between conservatives and liberals.

But as with economic reforms, many of these newly-elected reformers used their platforms to criticize what they still considered limited change. And the pushback by hardliners was just as fierce. In March , the largest newspaper in the Soviet Union published a full-throttled attack on Gorbachev by chemist and social critic Nina Andreyeva. Gorbachev held firm on a promise to end Soviet involvement in a war in Afghanistan , which the U. After 10 controversial years and nearly 15, Soviet deaths, troops fully withdrew in It was with the staunchly anti-Communist Reagan that Gorbachev, a new kind of Communist leader, achieved a series of landmark agreements, including the INF Treaty that eliminated all intermediate range nuclear weapons in Europe.

Gorbachev, tear down this wall. After decades of heavy-handed control over Eastern Bloc nations, the Soviet Union under Gorbachev eased their grip. In , he announced to the United Nations that Soviet troop levels would be reduced, and later said that the U.

The remarkable speed of the collapse of these satellite countries was stunning: By the end of the Berlin Wall came down and Germany was on the path to reunification, and relatively peaceful revolutions had brought democracy to countries like Poland, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Romania.

Inspired by reforms with the Soviet Union under both perestroika and glasnost, as well as the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, nationalist independence movements began to swell within the U. While it took several years for the economic and political reforms of perestroika to take effect, the new transparency under glasnost happened almost immediately.

Shocking revelations about past abuses under the Soviet system came to light. And while the Stalinist era may have been an early focus of these revelations, it soon spread to formerly sacrosanct subjects. That included exposing the corruption and inefficiencies in the modern-day Soviet system. The rapidity with which the foundation blocks of Soviet communism came under harsh criticism was unsettling for many in the Soviet Union, further destabilizing an already precarious situation.

An anti-Gorbachev crowd demonstrating in support of populist Boris Yeltsin. Having risen through the ranks of the Communist Party, Gorbachev was a skilled in-fighter who could navigate the dog-eat-dog world of the Kremlin. But when faced with a new, democratically elected group, those skills failed him. Another rising leader, Boris Yeltsin , was known for his popular touch.

The increasingly tension-filled relationship between the two men proved disastrous. They should have been allies, they could have been allies, they would have been terrific allies with their different skills, but they turned themselves into enemies.

Gorbachev played a role in creating Yeltsin as his nemesis, and then Yeltsin paid him back in spades. There is little doubt that these reforms, intended to strengthen the economy and transform the political system, instead undermined the very foundation of the Soviet Union.

While some sort of collapse may have been inevitable, Taubman believes that, thanks to Gorbachev, the ending was far less tumultuous than it could have been.

Gorbachev managed, or is responsible for, the relatively peaceful end of an empire. President George H. Bush and Soviet counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev during their joint press conference in Moscow concluding the two-day US-Soviet Summit dedicated to the disarmament.

The West, particularly the United States, could have eased the U. Bush , was slow to act when pushback from hardliners made Gorbachev most vulnerable. Bush might have worried that the aid would go down the drain. That decision had consequences that linger today. Taubman believes that this period marked the only time in the last century that America had a Russian or Soviet partner that was truly willing to be an ally, making it a missed opportunity of huge proportions. Many in Russia look back at the pre-Gorbachev era with a somewhat undeserved nostalgia, overlooking the economic, political and societal harshness of the Soviet system.

When Gorbachev ran for president in , just five years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he garnered less than one percent of the vote. Recent popularity polls have placed him well below even dictator Joseph Stalin.