ABSTRACT
A fleeting Soviet pact-making episode ensued around the so-called "500 Days" economic transition plan originally drafted in early 1990 by a young, then unknown economist hired by the Soviet government, Grigorii Yavlinskii. Combined with the political reforms to be included under a new Union Treaty, an economic transition agreement would have created the foundation for a full democratic transition. It is important to understand the reasons behind the development and demise of this first pact-making episode, if fully understand the vicissitudes of perestroika's politics and the contingency of its outcome. Three institutional constraints—the party-state's inertia, the state's institutional incohesion, and an alternative sovereignty institutionalized inside the Russian state apparat—strengthened during the period of the moderates' agreement, polarizing perestroika's nascent transitional politics. During the making and unmaking of the moderates' understanding, the party apparat and power ministries intensified their resistance to perestroika.
