(Demokratizatsiya) Excerpt: More than three and a half decades have passed since the start of the process of change in the Soviet Union known throughout the world as perestroika. The debate about its meaning and its legacy continues with undiminished intensity.
All these years, perestroika has been in my thoughts. I have been trying to find answers to the questions put to me by scholars, journalists and ordinary people in the letters that I receive. They want to understand perestroika—and that means it has not been relegated to the past. The experience and the lessons of perestroika remain relevant today, both for Russia and for the world.
Perestroika went through various stages. We were searching, we had our illusions, we made mistakes, and we had our achievements. If given a chance to start anew, I would have done many things differently, but I am confident that historically perestroika was a just cause. This means two things: first, perestroika was necessary, and second, we were moving in the right direction. […]
Read More © Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization, Summer 2021
Articles by Archie Brown, George W. Breslauer, Mark Kramer, Svetlana Savranskaya, Andrei Illarionov, and Jack F. Matlock Jr.
