ABSTRACT
The ultimate prerequisite for a successful perestroika appears to be a shift from centralized controls to autonomy and spontaneity in Soviet public life– in expression, participation and motivated individual initiative at work. Sobering and instructive, though not necessarily fatal, parallels have been drawn between perestroika and past reform efforts in Russia, the Socialist orbit, and the USSR. Of all the aspects of perestroika, glasnost'is the advanced, in fact the only great change apparent in the USSR since perestroika began. One of the influences on the future of glasnost' will be the nature of "democratization", another part of Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev's strategy. Gorbachev was engaged in trying to persuade his audience, rather than in reporting the way working people actually feel about perestroika. Their concept of social justice does not agree with the antileveling slant of socialist equity. Perestroika can be viewed as a prolonged, different phase process of reform. The four-phase process of reform is possibly marked by alternations of radicalism and retreat.
