Perestroika Observed

Extract

It is an attempt at moral regeneration, at expiation, at the purging of guilt;
a would-be effort at performing a Wirtschaftswunder (so far without visible success);
a political reorganization, the establishment of democracy, from above;
an intellectual liberalization; a partial abandonment of pretensions at a monopoly of truth;
the withering away, or at least conspicuous routinization of a secular faith;
a reincorporation of the Soviet Union in a wider civilization, an international idiom;
a recovery of traditional Russian culture (and of others), including ‘spiritual’ values, a much used phrase;
the establishment of the rule of law;
the re-creation of civil society;
a re-orientation in foreign relations and policy.

The legitimacy and the appeal of the perestroika regime has a curious double basis. It says, in effect: we claim your support because we are changing everything; and we also claim your support because we are preserving our established order, our Soviet, revolutionary, Leninist heritage and tradition. This may or may not be contradictory; but it is unquestionably the case and this is the manner in which the great restructuring is presented, advocated and defended.