ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on the crises besetting the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as Mikhail Gorbachev seeks to shift power from it to the soviets. The Conference on the Transformation of Socialism in the Soviet Union and China was notable in several respects, beginning with the fact that it took place at all. In contrast with Feng Shize's optimism about cultural pluralism, Howard Goldblatt argues that literature in China is always at the mercy of party bureaucrats, even when its criticisms of authority are allowed to be published. The book discusses the commodity economy to necessary changes in education, culture, the party, morality and ethics, and government. Decentralizing political or economic decision making while maintaining overall authority at the center is a difficult act to accomplish. Laws governing contentious matters such as criminal procedure have only been developed in both countries.
