What Was Perestroika?

On taking office in 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev inherited a Soviet economy with a sagging rate of industrial and agricultural output which was in desperate need of reform. Gorbachev chose to adjust the old system with a period of perestroika. Perestoika translated literally means restructuring and was the term attached to the attempts (1985-91) by the Prime Minister to transform the stagnant, inefficient command economy of the Soviet Union into a decentralized market-oriented economy. However, it was this program of economic, political, and social restructuring that became the unintended catalyst for dismantling what had taken nearly three-quarters of a century to erect: the Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist totalitarian state.
Initially, Gorbachev had no notion of introducing a market economy. The first phase of perestroika simply entailed restructuring the centrally planned economy. Gorbachev had realised that Russia was falling further and further behind the west technologically. He decided to invest heavily in the machine-building industry in order to stimulate technological progress. …