Perestroika: Reform that changed the world

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-31733045

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The tension in relations between Russia and the West is at a more dangerous level today than at any time since the first Reagan administration (1980-84).

So it is worth recalling a period (largely overlapping with the second Reagan administration) when Russia was becoming a freer country by the month.

It was a death in Moscow 30 years ago today - 10 March 1985 - that opened the door to domestic reform and to dramatic change in the political map of Europe.

Konsantin Chernenko, the 73-year-old conservative Communist leader of the Soviet Union, died, and the number two man in the Soviet hierarchy, Mikhail Gorbachev, promptly convened a meeting of the Politburo, the Communist Party's ruling body.

Some of those present would have liked to stop the further rise of Mr Gorbachev, who at 54 was the youngest member of the top leadership team, but they did not have a plausible alternative candidate.

By the afternoon of 11 March, Mr Gorbachev had been unanimously elected by the Central Committee as general secretary of the Communist Party and thus leader of the world's second superpower.

A combination of the difficulties the Soviet Union faced and the authority of the general secretaryship enabled Mr Gorbachev to launch his perestroika (reconstruction), which became a synonym for increasingly radical political innovation.

The new Soviet leader was already more of a reformer than his Politburo colleagues realised. In power, his policies became bolder and more far-reaching. He had an unusually open mind for a Communist politician.

The more, however, Mr Gorbachev reformed the Soviet system, the more he undercut the traditional authority of the party leader - his own powerbase - while the new tolerance brought countless long-suppressed problems, including nationalist discontent, to the surface of political life.

So much so that by 1990 the continuing existence of the Soviet Union was in jeopardy.

In December 1991, Mr Gorbachev's efforts to recreate the union as a voluntary federation ended in failure. The country dissolved into 15 successor states.

It is salutary to remember just how much changed, mainly for the better, in the period when Mr Gorbachev was the Soviet Union's last ruler - the principal architect of the transformation and its crucial facilitator.

Here are some of the internal changes, and, if anything, the even more momentous, international changes:

Internal changes:

International changes:

By 1991 relations between Russian leaders (especially with Mr Gorbachev as Soviet President but also with Boris Yeltsin as President of the Russian republic) and their Western counterparts were warm and trusting.

The failure of East and West to build on the new foundations is a tragedy of major proportions.

Archie Brown is emeritus professor of politics, University of Oxford, and the author of The Gorbachev Factor (1996) and Seven Years that Changed the World: Perestroika in Perspective (2007).