Article contents
Extract
- It is an attempt at moral regeneration, at expiation, at the purging of guilt;
- a would-be effort at performing a Wirtschaftswunder (so far without visible success);
- a political reorganization, the establishment of democracy, from above;
- an intellectual liberalization; a partial abandonment of pretensions at a monopoly of truth;
- the withering away, or at least conspicuous routinization of a secular faith;
- a reincorporation of the Soviet Union in a wider civilization, an international idiom;
- a recovery of traditional Russian culture (and of others), including ‘spiritual’ values, a much used phrase;
- the establishment of the rule of law;
- the re-creation of civil society;
- a re-orientation in foreign relations and policy.
The legitimacy and the appeal of the perestroika regime has a curious double basis. It says, in effect: we claim your support because we are changing everything; and we also claim your support because we are preserving our established order, our Soviet, revolutionary, Leninist heritage and tradition. This may or may not be contradictory; but it is unquestionably the case and this is the manner in which the great restructuring is presented, advocated and defended.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1990
- 1
- Cited by