ABSTRACT
In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union was engulfed in wide-ranging and apparently unprecedented power-restructuring processes. In the period of perestroika, Western observers reacted to Gorbachev's reform and revitalization effort in very different ways. Even in the early and more vigorous years of the Brezhnev era, however, attempts to restructure and make the Soviet economic system more flexible and efficient were obstructed and distorted in ways that foreshadowed the subsequent stagnation and ossification of late Brezhnevism. The tightening of discipline under Andropov resulted in immediate, if modest, economic improvements in the mid-1980s. With the success of perestroika premised on the unleashing of pent-up energies, popular movements, mass upheaval, and the fomenting of political and social pressures from below were thus the intended consequences of Gorbachev's politics of radical renewal. Patterns of continuity are also evident in the political realm, where the most striking characteristic of the emerging post-Soviet order is pervasive political authoritarianism.
