ABSTRACT
After six years of Mikhail Gorbachev, and despite all the talk about renewal and restructuring, the Soviet economy was worse off and the Soviet Union no longer existed as a political entity. As a program of economic restructuring and renewal, perestroika must be judged an absolute failure.2 Glasnost to be sure produced a political and cultural awakening of sorts unknown during the seventy-four years of communist rule, but perestroika simply failed to deliver the economic goods.
