Gorbachev's Gamble

...and the introduction of limited judicial review of selected administrative acts that had been unappealable in the Soviet bureaucratic culture...

...But the many "blank pages" of history that have yet to be filled in give credence to Laqueur's view that the Soviet leadership can countenance "more glasnost with regard to the present than the past, and this may not change soon...

...Desai cogently argues that Gorbachev and his advisers are " prisoners of a modeof [economic] thinking" that prevents them from comprehending the preconditions and functions of the capitalist market...

...Such pronouncements as "Death to the Communists," together with the slogans at the huge ethnic demonstrations in the north and south calling for an end to Russian occupation, suggest Laqueur's judgment that the outer limits of glasnost probably have been reached is premature...

...Its elements include the now familiar glasnost (openness), democratization, "new thinking" in foreign policy, and economic reform—broad concepts that provide the framework for sweeping executive decisions and new legislation...

...it has touched social and legal issues to a lesser extent...

...Desai and Laqueur discuss democratization only in passing, but it is driven by two basic Gorbachevian themes: Dispute and conflict are normal, indeed healthy, for a society, and "All that is not prohibited is permitted...

...Further, the publicity spotlight has been seeking out bureaucrats who are obstructing—or worse, sabotaging— economic reform measures...

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...Nor has the secrecy surrounding Kazakhstan's vast nuclear waste dumps been pierced by the new openness...

...Much of the legislation for formalizing democratization is also mired in drafting controversies...

...Critical documentaries are arriving on Soviet screens, too...

...Laqueur aptly writes of homelessness, hereto fore presented as exclusively a feature of capitalist societies: " Under glasnost it became possible for the first time to discuss a phenomenon that had been previously denied: the homeless, or bomzhi, 'people of no fixed address' in police language...

...Glasnost has had an equal impact on Soviet culture...

...Prostitution, male and female, child and adult, has become a routine topic...

...The informal rule seems to be, the closer something is to the circles of power, the greater the caution in permitting disclosures...

...The USSR's future, though, will not rest on socio-political change alone...

...That is not to say the traditional curtain of secrecy shrouding Soviet military policy and the upper reaches of political life is about to be lifted...

...by a parallel high culture and a vibrant youth counterculture...

...Even émigré Russian authors—e.g...

...Entrenched conservatives, fearing the destabilizing effects of glasnost and democratization, have taken contervailing steps...

...This journalistic openness follows a fairly set pattern: There is the initial disclosure of a troublesome situation, extended discussion, thousands of lettersto-the-editor, and finally widespread recognition of the "new" problem...

...author, "P.I...

...The long pending statute to institutionalize glasnost itself, a Soviet lawyer recently reported, is in its sixth draft—with each draft more regressive because of a backstage struggle between reformers and conservatives...

...the police walked their quiet beats...

...and atop the pyramid stood the ruling Communist Party, fount of all wisdom and source of all initiative...

...Some films that were blocked by the censor for years and others dealing with subjects deemed unthinkable prior to the mid-1980s— for instance, Commissar, Repentance, Little Vera—have played to appreciative audiences throughout the USSR...

...He sees it as a complex notion that has been applied unevenly...

...Drug abuse, AIDS, roving youth gangs, and organized crime, including "protection" rackets preying on the new private businesses, receive regular coverage...

...and, of course, by a vast, mostly illegal second economy that sprung up in response to rigid planning and consumer scarcities...

...Former dissidents participate critically with relative impunity, the easing of censorship is for the moment joining the official and high cultures, youths are growing bolder, and large stretches of the second economy are being decriminalized, allowing private business in the service sector to flourish...

...At the heart of these dramatic changes liesperestroika (restructuring), Mikhail S. Gorbachev's approach to modernizing the Soviet Union...

...Glasnost, by enlisting the intelligentsia and unleashing the press, is intended to serve as a catalyst for democratization, the mobilization andinvolvement of the masses...

...When the Party suffered an embarrassing setback in the recent elections for the new Congress of Soviets, it postponed republic and local elections until it could regroup...

...The effect of glasnost on economics can be seen in the breakdown of taboos on acknowledging the follies of central planning...

...and, comparatively speaking, it has been least apparent in treatments of historical, military and political matters...

...When one adds to this the deferral of price decontrol and the prohibition on bankruptcy and unemployment, the outlook for systemic economic reform is not promising...

...At the same time, despite Gorbachev's professed determination to carry out a social revolution through laws empowering citizens to play a more significant role in public life, legislative procedures remain a shield for behind-the-scenes battles...

...It was marked by political, ethnic and religious dissent...

...Stuchka: Selected Writings on Soviet Law and Marxism " Just four years ago, the Soviet Union was a seemingly placid place...

...Human rights policy remains fluid, with the hand of repression generally stayed in the highly visible Moscow and Leningrad regions while reports from the provinces indicate business as usual...

...They are trying, in short, to mechanically graft a market onto a bureaucratic society "from above...

...Amid the rough and tumble of competitive parliamentary elections glasnost, previously confined largely to print and film, took on an oral dimension...

...Desai is enthusiastic about his socio-political reforms...

...By contrast, although social problems related to the environment are being raised, the long-term health implications of the Chernobyl disaster still have not been revealed to the population living in the region...

...The concept includes "socialist pluralism," which has spawned thousands of unofficial groups and hundreds of unauthorized demonstrations...

...Short films have been made on Stalinist political justice, ecology and ethnic activism, while the highly acclaimed This is How We Live is a candid account of Soviet young people today...

...In legal affairs, glasnost actually was initiated during the days of Party chief Yuri V. Andropov (1982-84), was suspended under his successor, Konstantin U. Chernenko (1984-85), and has now been resumed by Gorbachev...

...In theory, Gorbachev has set up a causal network...

...True, Stalin and Stalinism are being reexamined, Nikolai Bukharin and the Old Bolsheviks have been posthumously rehabilitated, and statistics about past repressions are no longer suppressed...

...Certainly its vitali ty is a necessary condition for democratization, perhaps the most elusive element of perestroika...

...The light shed by glasnost is at its dimmest in the nether regions of Soviet history, military practices and politics...

...But the Soviet literati continue to await the major books of another Nobel Prize winner, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn...

...Today a sea change has occurred in the USSR...

...For example, glasnost has progressed most in the areas of journalism, culture and economics...

...That is the main question addressed by Padma Desai, professor of economics at Columbia and at the university's Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union, in Perestroika in Perspective...

...Ephemeral though this may be, thousands of ordinary citizens at campaign meetings made astonishing statements not heard in the USSR since 1917...

...The two internal initiatives are the leading edge of a superstructure revision that is to embrace the "new thinking," the cost-benefit analysis of Soviet external strategies, and is expected to produce the ultimate objective of perestroika: radical economic reform...

...an integral whole...

...A restrictive public assembly law is being rigorously enforced to curb demonstrations...

...Soviet citizens say and write nearly anything they please, the streets are alive with protests, new laws have begun to circumscribe bureaucratic power, and the Party is deeply divided...

...But as she herself says, "The two components of perestroika, the economic and the noneconomic, are...

...the f reeing of hundreds of prisoners of conscience and a softening of oppression...

...The big ethnic-based protests in the republics have brought forth a new corps of riot troops that has been deployed on several occasions...

...Some manifestations more peculiar to Soviet society are also being confronted, such as self-immolations in Soviet Central Asia, largely by young women reacting to restrictive Muslim traditions...

...If Russian journalists and editors are better informed than in the past about leadership politics, a combination of self-censorship and "telephonic editing" ensures that the average reader is kept in the dark...

...the Nobelists Ivan Bunin and Joseph Brodsky—are receiving attention...

...electoral and legislative reform designed to introduce political competition and broader participation in policymaking...

...On the other hand, in the fewmonths since The Long Road to Freedom went to press we have witnessed a rather startling development...

...Laqueur's The Long Road to Freedom is the first systematic study of glasnost...

...Serious cases of wrongful execution, police brutality, judicial corruption and "telephone justice," whereby a Party official directs the verdict, have been exposed...

...But beneath that officially imposed calm surface one could discern a roiling alternative realm...

...Nevertheless, most of the secret Soviet world continues to be off limits...

...Concurrently, yesterday's shadow system is surfacing as a rudimentary civil society...

...The censor controlled the word—written, spoken and visual...

...On the literary side, books that would not have been published a few years ago, like Anatoly Rybakov's Children oftheArbat, have become best-sellers...

...This explains why many students of Soviet history and politics are less than sanguine about perestroïka's prospects...

...As Walter Laqueur and Padma Desai suggest in their respective books, however, the neat symmetries of reformist theory yield to an everyday reality fraught with contradiction and confusion in economic policy, as well as criticism and even opposition in the case of social policy...

...Since 1986, newspapers have been taking up problems familiar to industrial societies elsewhere that had long been dismissed in the USSR...

...More is learned from "leaks" than through glasnost...

...They had apparently never been seen before and were now spotted not only in the big cities but almost everywhere, from rundown villages in Central Asia to the northern seaports, finding shelter in courtyards, cellars and railway stations...

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...Perestroika' in Perspective: The Design and Dilemmas of Soviet Reform By Padma Desai Princeton...

...Indisputably Gorbachev is a leader of enormous talent who has set great social forces in motion in the USSR...

...The Afghan war is being freely discussed, selected space and military facilities have been opened to inspection as part of the quid pro quo of disarmament negotiations, and things like draft dodging, brutal hazing and training deaths are reported...

...Inacareful, lucid analysis of industrial, agricultural, coop and foreign trade policies, she raises reasonable doubts about the strategy...

...What is the outlook for the success of its economic reform...

...bureaucrats governed from their armchairs...

...Reviewed by Robert Sharlet Professor of political science, Union College...

...In addition, numerous formerly banned works have been issued, such as Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago, George Orwell's 1984, Varlam Shalamov's sam izdat stories, and thepoems of the late, once imprisoned underground writer Yuli Daniel...

...Gorbachev, Desai stresses, is a firmly committed Communist who hopes to introduce a market system without undermining the legitimacy of authoritarian socialism...

...Articles about socialism's failure in this regard have become regular fare in the press as leading economists point to budget deficits and inflation...