The Making of the New Soviet Left

As perestroika gathered momentum, an inchoate opposition sprang up from the counter-cultural grassroots in the Soviet Union which the Brezhnev government had never fully succeeded in eliminating. With the discreet sponsorship of establishment liberals, disparate groups managed to consolidate into an umbrella organization by August 1987. Since then, it has undergone a rapid succession of mergers, splits and other restructurings. These groups receive little media coverage in the West, despite the fact that a number of their once heretical political ideas have made their way into the mainstream of the reform debate. The Soviet Left can be defined provisionally in very broad terms, as was done by Sogrin regarding the first stage of perestroika, as comprising all those political groups seeking a “radical dismantling of the existing system.”

Grassroots · Mainstream · Opposition (politics · Political economy · Political radicalism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Soviet union · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · European history and politics · Law · Public Administration · Soviet and Russian History