Perestroika Defined (1987)
means mass initiative. It is the comprehensive development of democracy,
socialist self-government, encouraging of initiative and creative
endeavor, improved order and discipline, more glasnost, criticism, and
self-criticism in all spheres of our society. It is utmost respect for
the individual and consideration for personal dignity.
Perestroika is the all-around intensification of the Soviet economy, the revival and development of the principles of democratic centralism in running the national economy, the universal introduction of economic methods, the renunciation of management by injunction and by administrative methods, and the overall encouragement of innovation and socialist enterprise. . . .
Perestroika means priority development of the social sphere aimed at ever better satisfaction of the Soviet people's requirements for good living and working conditions, for good rest and recreation, education, and health care. It means unceasing concern for cultural and spiritual wealth, for the culture of every individual and society as a whole.
Perestroika means the elimination from society of the distortions of socialist ethics, the consistent implementation of the principles of social justice. It means the unity of words and deeds, rights and duties. It is the elevation of honest, highly qualified labor, the overcoming of leveling tendencies in pay and consumerism. . . .
. . . The essence of perestroika lies in the fact that it unites socialism with democracy and revives the Leninist concept of socialist construction both in theory and in practice. Such is the essence of perestroika, which accounts for its genuine revolutionary spirit and its all-embracing scope.
The goal is worth the effort. And we are sure that our effort will be a worthy contribution to humanity's social progress.
[Source: Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika (New York: Harper Collins, 1987), quoted in Mark Kishlansky, ed., Sources of the West: Readings in Western Civilization, 4th ed., vol. 2 (New York: Longman, 2001), p. 322.]
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