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Browse: Home / History and Politics

Why didn’t the soviet people like Gorbachevs reforms?

Question by idk: Why did the soviet union citezens not like girbachevs reforms?
Perestroika, and Glasnost

Answers and Views:

Answer by Guru Hank
They could guess what was coming. The country went bankrupt and the mafia took over.

Answer by SS
Glasnost was well received. It means opening. The problem was that it was like opening Pandora’s box. Once people had freedoms to talk / complain / express positions, then all sorts of things in the government could be critiqued. So, glasnost was not liked by the ultra-conservative Communist old guard (those who ultimately tried to put Gorbachev under house arrest in August 1991).

Perestroika was economic restructuring and it was the second economic plan (if I remember correctly) established by Gorby. It was a two steps forward, one step back kind of thing. Bring in limited capitalism (like bringing in McDonald’s for example) in order to strengthen the economic foundations of the Soviet State. This worked far more slowly. Kind of like how people got mad at President Obama because he was going to “fix” the economy. Well, it’s slowly getting better, but it’s a process. A long process. Perestroika was a process but didn’t work immediately, or worked to slowly. Combine that with the new openness of glasnost and you have a population still hurting economically, but now with the freedoms to complain about it.

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