Architectural Problems of Reform in the Soviet Union

This article examines reforms in the USSR. In any analysis of specific periods of Soviet history, the need exists to recognise that the basic features of the political and economic order were put in place within two years of the October 1917 Revolution and began to be fatally undermined only in the late 1980s. The maintenance of this order required permanent stabilising ingredients, but the inevitable consequence was a tendency to decay, which in turn necessitated recurrent reforming initiatives. Such reforms, however, could only be partial unless the entire order was to be jeopardised. This axiom was ignored by Gorbachev and the USSR collapsed

Axiom · Economic system · Economics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Soviet union · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · Law · Regional Socio-Economic Development Trends · Soviet and Russian History