ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the subject of change in the Soviet Union from an historical and historian's perspective, isolating two major themes. The first is the historical problem of initiative in the Soviet Union, and its significance for perestroika. The second is Soviet reassessment of the different stages of Soviet history in the age of glasnost', and the light it sheds on Mikhail Gorbachev's policy intentions and the attitudes of the educated Soviet public. Marxism in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russia was not only an ideology of revolution. It was also an ideology of modernization, emphasizing the necessity of overcoming Russia's backwardness and following the Western pattern of industrialization and economic development. The New Economic Policy (NEP) was introduced by Lenin in 1921. NEP was a response to the failure of the Bolsheviks' Civil War policies of "War Communism," which had maximized centralized state control of the economy.
