ABSTRACT
When Mikhail Gorbachev assumed power in March 1985 the world order in general and US-Soviet relations in particular showed few signs that they were about to undergo revolutionary change. While Gorbachev represented a new generation within the Soviet leadership – he was the first General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party to have reached maturity after the Second World War – expectations generally were of liberalization within the familiar confines of Soviet orthodoxy rather than of a radical departure, far less of an abandonment of the Soviet system. Gorbachev’s widely read tract Perestroika, published in 1988, was firmly anti-Stalinist and also deeply critical of the period of ‘stagnation’ under Brezhnev. But it was not anti-socialist. Through perestroika and glasnost, he wrote, ‘the ideals of socialism will gain fresh impetus’, and they would do so through a return to the ideals of Lenin, who ‘lives on in the minds and hearts of millions of people’ (Gorbachev 1988: 131, 25).
