ABSTRACT
The image of Russia trapped on a treadmill of failed reform has caught the imagination of the informed public in the Soviet Union as well as in the West. Leonid Brezhnev's complacent style and rhetoric merely masked developments deep within Soviet society in much the same way that the era of "reaction" under Nicholas the author obscured the formative period of the Great Reforms more than a century ago. The very intricacy of opinion suggests that a revolution of the mind is well under way in the Soviet Union. Strike actions in the Soviet Union have amplified the problems confronting the Soviet trade unions and Communist Party agencies as a consequence of a four-decade trend toward greater heterogeneity within the Soviet working class. Dramatic changes in the structure of the Soviet economy have been accompanied by rapid expansion in the number of white-collar professionals based largely in leading metropolitan areas.
