Perestroika: A Reassessment^*

^* This article was originally published with errors. This version has been corrected. Please see corrigendum (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2013.779788)

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Notes

^* This article was originally published with errors. This version has been corrected. Please see corrigendum (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2013.779788)

¹ For a recent analysis see Brown (2009, pp. 481–602).

² As Archie Brown (2011) argues, Gorbachev cannot be blamed for the disintegration of the Soviet Union; many of those who do blame him are explicitly or implicitly arguing that he should have taken the USSR backwards, to a period of much greater repression. A 2011 survey conducted by VTSIOM indicated that while most older Russians blamed Gorbachev for the break-up, 37% of respondents (and 41% of young Russians) believed that the country would have disintegrated with or without Gorbachev (Interfax 2011). Another 2011 survey, this one by the Levada Center, suggested that almost 40% of Russians had, by 2011, come to realise that the August 1991 plotters were largely to blame for the break-up, compared with only 25% a decade earlier (Bridge 2011).

³ There has been a steady stream of Russian analyses of Andropov in recent years—see for example the work by Medvedev (2004), Mlechin (2008) and Semanov (2011).

⁴ See for example, Brown (2009, p. 486) and Zlotnik (1984, p. 3); for an atypical and more positive analysis of Chernenko's role see Zemtsov (1989).

⁵ For example, Sakwa (1990, p. 268); see also Gorbachev's own analysis of the development of perestroika in Gorbachev (1987), and his speech to the 27th CPSU Congress in Gorbachev (1986).

⁶ It is well known that the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) was deemed legal by the Russian Constitutional Court in November 1992, thus reversing the suspension (August 1991) and the ban (November 1991) imposed by Yel'tsin. (For details of the complexities of this situation see Henderson-2007). There is less awareness that the CPSU itself—also suspended in August and finally banned in Russia in November 1991—was in essence resurrected in mid-1992. Unlike the CPRF, however, which has since 1995 consistently come either first or second in parliamentary (Duma) elections, the CPSU has not been registered by the Ministry of Justice, and so cannot participate in Russian elections—and is of marginal significance. But it has a website, which is available at http://kpss.net.ru/, accessed 28 July 2012.

⁷ It could be argued that the only amendment made so far to the 1993 Russian constitution—extending the term of office of the president from four to six years (and of the Duma from four to five years), passed in 2008 and in the case of the presidential reform effective from 2012—does help to increase Putin's power. But ever since 2008, when the world saw how Putin would de facto retain power by playing musical chairs with a hand-picked replacement president, it has been obvious that he does not need to change the constitution to be the actual leader of Russia. The extension of terms simply means that Putin does not have to play musical chairs so frequently, and that he can be the de jure head of the Russian state for longer than would have previously been the case.

⁸ Not all observers accept that Putin is a strong leader; see for example Shevtsova (2003, pp. 141–43, 172–73). Gorbachev himself has often praised Putin for stabilising Russia, though the former General Secretary has become increasingly critical of Putin's moves towards authoritarianism.

⁹ Former US Ambassador to the USSR Jack Matlock has, on various occasions, including at the 2010 ICCEES Congress in Stockholm, argued that nobody lost the Cold War; its ending was a ‘win–win’ situation for all. But not everyone agrees with this, and many Russians felt humiliated by what they perceived to be the Western victory. The situation was not helped by the gloating of Western triumphalists such as Francis Fukuyama (1989, 1992). Fukuyama subsequently refined his argument, though he claimed that he was merely explaining it better because so many critics had misunderstood his thesis—see Fukuyama (1994).

¹⁰ The World Bank Gini Index, available at: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI, accessed 28 July 2012.

¹¹ OECD StatExtracts, available at: http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?QueryId=26068, accessed 28 July 2012. It should be noted that progressive tax rates typically reduce the post-tax and transfers Gini coefficient, so that Russia's flat tax system renders its post-tax and transfers Gini coefficient even higher than its pre-tax one relative to other countries such as the USA.

¹² The World Bank Gini Index, available at: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI, accessed 28 July 2012.

¹³ For an excellent analysis of mortality rates in Russia, including as these relate to alcohol abuse, see Eberstadt (2010, especially pp. 121–25).

¹⁴ Perestroika was a factor in the ending of Communist power in countries such as Mongolia and Cambodia. Despite denials by its communist leadership (Palmujoki 1999, p. 32), it also exerted some influence on the major economic (but not political) reform in Vietnam known as doi moi (‘renovation’). And it is reasonable to suggest that the changes in the former Yugoslavia and Albania, neither of which had been part of the Soviet bloc, were also inspired by the developments happening from 1989 within the Soviet bloc, so that perestroika had an indirect impact on these states too.

¹⁵ The CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) is different from what Gorbachev apparently had in mind, and has not been a resounding success anyway.