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Perestroika : New Thinking for Our Country and the World

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Perestroika : New Thinking for Our Country and the World PERESTROIKA MIKHAIL GORBACHEV PERESTROIKA New Thinking for Our Country and the World A Cornelia (5 Michael Bessie Book HARPER & ROW, PUBLISHERS, New York Cambridge, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Washington London, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Singapore, Sydney >J PERESTROIKA New Thinking for Our Country and the World. Copyright © 1987 by Mikhail Gor- bachev. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used 7= or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quota- tions embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Harper & Row. Publishers, Inc., 10 E. 53rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10022. Published simultaneously in Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside Ltd, Toronto. FIRST EDITION Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gorbachev, Mikhail Sergeyevich, 1931— Perestroika : new thinking for our country and the world. "A Cornelia & Michael Bessie book." 1. Soviet Union— Foreign relations — 1975- 2. Soviet Union— Politics and government— 1982— 3. World politics— 1985-1995. I. Title. DK289.G675 1987 327'.09'048 87-46197 ISBN 0-06-039085-9 87 88 89 90 91 HC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I CONTENTS To the Reader 9 PART ONE PERESTROIKA Chapter 1 Perestroika: Origins, Essence, Revolutionary Character 17 Perestroika—An Urgent Necessity 17 Turning to Lenin, an Ideological Source of Perestroika 25 A Carefully Prepared Program, rather than a Pompous Declaration 27 More Socialism and More Democracy 36 Lessons of History 38 What Inspired Us to Launch Perestroika 45 Perestroika is a Revolution 49 A "Revolution from Above"? The Party and Perestroika 55 Chapter 2 Perestroika Gets Under Way: The First Conclusions 60 I Society is Put in Motion 60 How It All Began 60 Perestroika Gains Momentum 64 We Have No Ready-Made Formulas 65 More Light to Glasnost! 75 Perestroika and the InteUigentsia 80 II New Economic and Social Policy in Action 83 Economic Reform: The June 1987 Plenary Meeting of the CPSU Central Committee 84 On to Full Cost Accounting! 88 PERESTROIKA A New Concept of Centralism CONTENTS Soviet- Indian Relations 185 At A Difficult Watershed 186 Latin America: A Time of Major Change 187 Cooperation, not Confrontation 188 Chapter 6 Europe in Soviet Foreign Policy 190 Heritage of History 191 Europe is Our Common Home 194 Necessity: Imperatives for Pan-European Policy 195 Europe's Opportunities 197 Two German States 199 Europe and Disarmament 201 European Cooperation 204 First Signs of the New Thinking in Europe 206 On Europe and the United States 207 Europe's Responsibility 209 Chapter 7 Problems of Disartnament and USSR-USA Relations 210 What Do We Expect from the United States of America? 212 The US: "Shining City Atop A Hill" 214 The "Enemy Image" 216 Who Needs tiie Arms Race and Why? 218 More About Realities: Removing the Ideological Edge from Interstate Relations 221 Alienation is Evil 222 On the Road to Geneva 225 Geneva 226 After Geneva 227 Moratorium 228 The Nuclear Disarmament Program 229 The US Since Geneva 232 The Lesson of Chernobyl 235 Reykjavik 236 After Reykjavik 241 The Moscow Forum and Medium-Range Missiles 244 Conclusion 253 To the Reader In writing this book it has been my desire to address directly the peoples of the USSR, the United States, indeed every country. I have met government and other leaders of many states and representatives of their public, but the purpose of this book is to talk without intermediaries to the citizens of the whole world about things that, without exception, concern us all. I have written this book because I believe in their common sense. I am convinced that they, like me, worry about the future of our planet. This is the most important matter. We must meet and discuss. We must tackle problems in a spirit of cooperation rather than animosity. I well realize that not everyone will agree with me. As a matter of fact, neither will I agree with everything others say on various issues. This makes dialogue all the more important. And this book is my contribution to it. Perestroika is no scientific treatise or propaganda pamphlet though the views, conclusions and analytical approaches which the reader will find in it are naturally based on definite values and theoretical prem- ises. It is rather a collection of thoughts and reflections on perestroika, the problems we face, the scale of the changes involved and the complexity, responsibility and uniqueness of our time. I purposefully avoid cramming the book with facts, figures and details. It is a book about our plans and about the ways we are going to carry them through, and— 1 repeat—an invitation to dialogue. A large part of it is devoted to new political thinking, to the philosophy of our foreign policy. And if this book helps strengthen international trust, I shall consider its role fulfilled. What is perestroika, or restructuring.' Why do we need it? What are its substance and objectives? What does it reject and what does it create? How is it proceeding and what might be its consequences for the Soviet Union and the world community? These are all legitimate questions to which many seek answers: politicians and businessmen, scholars and journalists, teachers and PERESTROIKA physicians, clergymen, writers and students, workers and farmers. Many want to understand what is actually taking place in the Soviet Union, especially since newspapers and television in the West continue to be swept by waves of ill-will toward my country. Perestroika is the focus of the intellectual life of our society now. That is natural, because it concerns the future of this country. The changes it is bringing affect all Soviet people and deal with the most vital issues. Everyone is anxious to know the kind of society we ourselves, and our children and grandchildren, will live in. Other socialist countries are showing a natural and lively interest in the Soviet restructuring. They, too, are living through a difficult but highly important period of quest in their development, devising and trying out ways of accelerating economic and social growth. Success here is largely linked with our interaction, with our joint undertakings and concerns. So the current interest in our country is understandable, especially considering the influence it has in world affairs. Considering all these things, I assented to the request of the American publishers to write this book. We want to be understood. The Soviet Union is truly living through a dramatic period. The Communist Party made a critical analysis of the situation that had developed by the mid-1980s and formulated this policy of perestroika, or restructuring, a policy of accelerating the country's social and economic progress and renewing all spheres of life. Soviet people have both understood and accepted this policy. Perestroika has animated the whole of society. True, our country is huge. Many problems have accumulated and it won't be easy to solve them. But change has begun and society cannot now turn back. There are different interpretations of perestroika in the West, including the United States. There is the view that it has been necessitated by the disastrous state of the Soviet economy and that it signifies disenchantment with socialism and a crisis for its ideals and ultimate goals. Nothing could be further from the truth than such interpretations, whatever the motives behind them. Of course, perestroika has been largely stimulated by our dissatis- faction with the way things have been going in our country in recent years. But it has to a far greater extent been prompted by an awareness that the potential of socialism had been underutilized. We realize 10 — TO THE READER this particularly clearly now in the days of the seventieth anniversary of our Revolution. We have a sound material foundation, a wealth of experience and a broad world oudook with which to perfect our society purposefully and continuously, seeking to gain ever greater returns in terms of quantit}' and quaUty—from all our activities. I would say from the start that perestroika has proved more difficult than we at first imagined. We have had to reassess many things. Yet, with every step forward we are more and more convinced that we have taken the right track and are doing things properly. Some people say that the ambitious goals set forth by the policy of perestroika in our country have prompted the peace proposals we have lately made in the international arena. This is an oversimplification. It is well known that the Soviet Union has long been working towards peace and cooperation and has advanced many proposals which, had they been accepted, would have normalized the international situation. True, we need normal international conditions for our internal progress. But we want a world free of war, without arms races, nuclear-weapons and violence; not only because this is an optimal condition for our internal development. It is an objective global requirement that stems from the realities of the present day. But our new thinking goes further. The world is living in an atmosphere not only of nuclear threat, but also of unresolved major social problems, of new stresses created by scientific and technological advancement and by the exacerbation of global problems. Mankind today faces unprecedented problems and the future will hang in the balance, if joint solutions are not found. All countries are now more interdependent than ever before, and the stockpiling of weapons, especially nuclear missiles, makes the outbreak of a world war, even if unsanctioned or accidental, increasingly more probable, due simply to a technical failure or human fallibility. Yet all living things on Earth would suffer.
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