ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the Soviet reformers’ views of the crisis of the Soviet system. It assesses the major interest groups as the decisive players in what is still a game of power politics. The chapter discusses the most common scenarios for perestroika and which of these appear the most plausible. For Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev perestroika started as a kind of anti-movement, a declaration of war on the traditional, essentially Stalinist command system. Gorbachev avoided rousing powerful opponents earlier than necessary because different people could initially interpret the new catchword in different ways. Gorbachev cleverly began his reform efforts by claiming to restore true Leninism, while at the same time interpreting Lenin in a pointedly selective, Eurocommunist, reformist way. Gorbachev is an educated man who is interested in philosophical questions. By warning about a crisis-or less ominously, a pre-crisis–Gorbachev summed up an aesopic, esoteric debate about the possibility of “antagonistic contradictions” even under socialism.
