--- "Devine, James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> REPLY: yes. There's was also the problem that the
> system wasn't good at providing good consumer goods
> or freedom of expression.
My own suspicion is that internal contradictions were
more important for the breakup of the USSR than
external circumstances (though of course low oil
prices were a major factor at harming the economy).
But of course it's debatable.
>
> REPLY: Right. I was using "glasnost" as short-hand
> for both itself and perestroika. ("democracy" was
> the third part of Gorby's trinity, right?)
Yes. BTW the word "perestroika" is used in Russia also
to refer to the Yeltsin-era reforms. Perestroika and
glastnost were related but different phenomenon,
economic restructuring (literally, "pere-stroika,"
"building-through," tunnelling through something to
get to the other side) on the one hand and freedom of
expression on the other.
Efforts
> at economic restructuring seem to have started in
> the 1950s, if not earlier. Libermanism and all that.
> And did Khruschev promise more consumer goods?
Yes, but he didn't succeed very well. That was an era
of shortages. My roommate's mother (she's about 65)
says it was like the war. The Brezhnev era was when
living standards really started to improve, at least
until the early 80s.
>
> REPLY: right. But there was also the class issue of
> workers vs. bureaucrats.
>
Which Yeltsin appealed to brilliantly -- "we must get
rid of the priviliges of the bureaucrats!" (This
sounds hilarious today, at a time when bureaucrats in
Russia live at a level beyond their wildest Soviet dreams.)
=====
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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