Policies: domestic reforms

List key policies

• perestroika

• glasnost

• anti-alcohol campaign

• democratisation

Explain perestroika

Perestroika (“restructuring”):

• Aimed to modernise the economy

• reduce central planning

• introduce limited market mechanisms.

List laws under perestroika 

• Law on State Enterprises

• Law on Cooperatives

• Law on Joint Ventures 

Describe the Law on State Enterprises 

Law on State Enterprises (1987):

• Factories gained autonomy over pricing and production

• causing chaos, hoarding, and inflation as planning broke down.

Describe Law on Cooperatives 

Law on Cooperatives (1988):

• Legalised small private businesses;

  • by 1990 ≈200,000 cooperatives employed ≈6 million people.

• Success revealed public appetite for markets

• but worsened shortages as goods flowed to private trade.

Describe Law on Joint Ventures 

Law on Joint Ventures (1987):

• Allowed Western firms into the USSR (e.g., Pepsi, McDonald’s),

• but bureaucracy and corruption slowed progress.

• Impact: Instead of prosperity,

  • GDP fell 4% (1990),

  • the budget deficit hit ≈100 billion roubles,

  • undermining trust in socialism.

Explain glasnost 

Glasnost (“openness”):

Relaxed censorship and encouraged transparency.

List examples of glasnost 

• media transparency 

• gulag exposés 

• cultural thaw

• legitimisation of public criticism 

Describe media transparency 

• From 1986, media exposed corruption, bureaucracy, and Stalin’s crimes;

• the Chernobyl disaster highlighted the need for openness.

  • “Chernobyl revealed the hollowness of glasnost”

  • The technological failures were only revealed after the collapse of the Soviet Union

Describe gulag exposés 

• By 1989, papers like Pravda and Ogonyok published Gulag exposés;

• Ogonyok’s circulation soared from 1.5m to 5m.

Describe cultural thaw

A cultural thaw allowed works like Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago and Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago to circulate openly.

Describe legitimisation of pubic criticism of the party

• Politically, glasnost legitimised public criticism of the CPSU,

• fuelling strikes, protests, and nationalist movements

  • pushed toward pluralism.

When was the anti-alcohol campaign?

Anti-alcohol campaign (1985–88):

Describe aim of anti-alcohol campaign

• Aimed to cut alcoholism, which cost ≈15% of labour productivity.

• Vodka prices doubled

• vineyards uprooted

• sales restricted.

Describe short term impacts of anti-alcohol campaign

Short-term:

• consumption fell ≈40%,

• male life expectancy rose from 62 (1985) to 64 (1987).

Describe structural effects of anti-alcohol campaign 

• But state revenue collapsed

  • alcohol made up ≈12% of income

• black-market moonshine boomed.

• By 1988, the campaign was abandoned.

Explain democratisation

Democratisation:

Gorbachev attempted to reform the CPSU’s monopoly on power.

Describe the list of actions under democratisation

• At the 19th Party Conference (1988), he announced multi-candidate elections.

• In the Congress of People’s Deputies (1989), ≈1,500 independents were elected. Televised debates exposed corruption; Boris Yeltsin’s landslide victory in Moscow (89%) made him a reformist symbol.

• By 1990, Article 6 (CPSU monopoly) was abolished, ending one-party rule.

• Democratisation empowered nationalist and reformist forces, fatally undermining CPSU authority

Evaluate Gorbachev’s domestic reforms

Gorbachev’s reforms were bold but destabilising.

Perestroika created economic chaos; glasnost opened a floodgate of criticism; democratisation dismantled Party dominance.

Aimed at revitalising socialism, these reforms instead accelerated its collapse, unleashing forces Gorbachev could not control.