ABSTRACT
Aleksandr Yakovlev acknowledged that perestroika had so far brought about few material improvements in the lives of ordinary Soviet citizens. One of Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev’s top economic advisers, Leonid Abalkin, said in late-1988 that the leaders’ initial optimism over perestroika’s chances of success had been replaced by a realization that it could actually be decades before real improvements were felt. At about the time of the Party Conference in June 1988, the Soviet leaders appear to have become sufficiently alarmed about consumer discontent to undertake a policy review. Gorbachev is trying to make the Soviet economy competitive with those of the Western world; his prime requirement is a workforce that is willing to think creatively and work conscientiously. The majority of the working class, Nathan Gardels was told, supported Gorbachev’s political reforms but not the economic ones, preferring the security of the old system to which they were accustomed.
