ABSTRACT
Americans tend to see Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of perestroika (restructuring) of the Soviet system as a genuine attempt to bring badly needed changes, an attempt that faces both serious obstacles and strong opposition, especially from the entrenched bureaucracy. But beyond that point, our grasp of what is happening in the Soviet Union today is fairly limited. Resistance to perestroika comes from other quarters as well. Without overhauling the kolkhoz system, without allowing enterprises to function as autonomous economic units, without accepting the principle of a genuinely mixed competitive economy, without removing the party from routine administrative and economic affairs, and without allowing the republics much more leeway in handling local and regional problems, the current restructuring will not succeed. If Gorbachev fails to remove those obstacles from the path of his reforms, the result will be nedostroika, not perestroika.
