ABSTRACT
In many ways the Politburo is the most powerful political body in the world. The bureaucracy is the base upon which most of the Politburo's power rests. The Politburo has enormous judicial power. Mikhail Gorbachev knows the problem. He has said as much many times, but neither he nor any of his Politburo colleagues have ever said that adopting a market-place economy is the price that must be paid for successful economic reform. Such a reform would cost dearly in terms of central, emphatically Politburo, economic and political controls over the Soviet Union and its people. A major indicator that the Politburo is determined to improve the domestic economy would be their willingness to make the compromises necessary to reduce genuinely the enormous burden of Soviet defense expenditures. Some former Western public officials are ridiculed, but rarely to the extent that are former Politburo members.
