ABSTRACT
Perestroika was accompanied by stagnation up to 1989, contraction in 1990, and precipitate decline thereafter. The failure of perestroika had undermined faith even among the leaders of the Communist Party itself. The torrent of public criticism was couched in terms of the deterioration of Soviet life that had set in under Brezhnev, together with support for perestroika and reform of the Soviet system. The effect of perestroika and economic balkanization had been to erode their control over the flow of resources. The manifest failure of successive versions of perestroika gradually eroded the confidence of Gorbachev and his colleagues. The economic impasse conditioned the outcome of Gorbachev's other major domestic reforms: the promotion of glasnost and democratization of the State. Glasnost dramatically intensified national self-consciousness as the cultural intelligentsia of each minority found it free to recapture and glorify the nation's past; and to expose at once the cultural and demographic encroachment of Russian language and migration.
