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Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World
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Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World Customer Reviews
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Gorbachev's political statement that he deserves far more credit for than he has received
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It has been almost twenty years since this book was written and shortly after that, the Soviet Union fell apart. That political entity known as the Soviet Block suddenly was no more, going out more with a soft pop than anything approaching a bang. There are those who believe that the collapse of the Soviet Union was inevitable, they cite technological advancement and the superiority of the capitalist system as the root causes.
All that is true, but as we saw when several of the hard-line communists tried to stage a coup, the collapse of the Soviet Union could have been very bloody. For all of that Gorbachev deserves to get far more credit than history has so far granted him. He could have clamped down the political controls while easing the economic ones. In fact it can be argued that it would have been better for the subsequent Russian nation had he been more politically forceful as the Soviet Empire was falling apart.
This book is a description of Gorbachev's political and economic philosophy, but more important, it is a statement of how he viewed the Soviet presence in the world. For it is in this book that one can see the seeds of the destruction of the Soviet Empire, when he made it clear that he would not use force to maintain it. Once the fear of political repression was removed, there was little to keep it together.
I read this book when it first came out in 1988 and was impressed with Gorbachev. Unlike others who seem to consider him a historical nonentity, my opinion of him is higher than it was in 1988. It was his vision that allowed the transition to take place and if he is guilty of anything, it is a lack of vision as to how quickly it would lead to dramatic change. But at the time, there were very few people who can claim that level of clairvoyance.
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