ABSTRACT
China's reform in the late 1970s and the reforms in the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s was both moderate in nature. The Soviet Union had not only shifted the focus of reform from the economy to political aspects but also drastically transformed the goal of political reform from government reform and moderate liberalization to radical liberalization and democratization. Michael McFaul discusses the empirical works by applying transition theory to the study of the Soviet/Russian transformation, Russia's Unfinished Revolution. In his study, there are three major goals of reform in Soviet Union: democratization, marketization, and the restructuring of the sovereign state. His study argues that if a socialist country adopts a gradual course of reform, then it would be well justified to further divide the goal of political reform into three sub-goals of different dimensions or stages, namely administrative or government reform, moderate liberalization, and democratization.
