ABSTRACT
The use of Soviet history as a tool of reform has emerged as an essential element of Mikhail Gorbachev's political strategy. Although the phenomenon has an instrumental cast to it, political leaders, writers, social scientists, and other commentators have reopened a number of pages of Soviet history and subjected them to a more objective reading. Toward the middle of 1986, as Gorbachev came to perceive the need for broad social and political reform in the Soviet Union, he apparently began to perceive the utility of a broad re-examination of Soviet history. Under Gorbachev, prominent politicians, academics, and writers—in a wide variety of forums—have offered a comprehensive critique that often explicitly rejects the political, economic, and ideological rationale of Soviet rural policy in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Changing Soviet views of the international environment are also contributing to the broadening of the limits of what is permissible in the examination of history.
