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1 results

  • 12 - The Gorbachev era

  • from Part I - Russia and the Soviet Union: The Story through Time
  • Edited by Ronald Grigor Suny
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Russia
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    02 November 2006, pp 316-351

  • Summary

    No period in peacetime in twentieth-century Russia saw such dramatic change as the years between 1985 and 1991. During this time Russia achieved a greater political freedom than it had ever enjoyed before. The Cold War ended definitively in 1989 when the Central and Eastern European states regained their sovereignty. One of the most important developments in the Soviet Union following Mikhail Gorbachev's selection as General Secretary was a change of political language. New concepts were introduced into Soviet political discourse and old ones shed the meanings they had been accorded hitherto by Soviet ideology. The most immediate stimulus to change in the Soviet Union at the beginning of the Gorbachev era was the long-term decline in the rate of economic growth and the fact that the Soviet economy was not only lagging behind the most advanced Western countries but also was being overtaken by some of the newly industrialising countries in Asia.