SCOTT (Copy 1): From the John Holmes Library Collection.

This argues that Perestroika failed as the result of the lack of understanding of market and political processes with reform processes representing

Perestroika, Glasnost and Socialism is a collection of twenty articles written during the past quarter century. The book derives its socialist inspiration from the celebrated essay of Albert Einsteins Why Socialism? Reaction Strikes Europe. The opening article written on the eve of disintegration of socialist camp gives a graphic picture on how the intellectual classes could engineer a counterrevolution with the help of USA and other developed countries. Liberation of a hundred nationalities from Czarist oppression and creation of a multinational state based on the principle of peaceful coexistence of diverse cultures was the most significant historical contribution by Soviet revolution. India, as a multinational country, has many things to learn from the Soviet experiment as well as the experience of CIS and the erstwhile CMEA countries. Articles on the development experience of India, reproduced in this collection, highlight the unfinished tasks of national liberation in a multinational country, ruled for long by anti-people coalitions of elite classes under the influence of imperialism and global monopoly capital. Experience of the post-Soviet era teaches that completion of national liberation is an essential precondition for the re-envisioning of socialism.

This book is based on Conference on the Transformation of Socialism in the Soviet Union and China, and reveals a second feature of the conference: the candor of the presentations. It discusses the effects of the reforms on political processes and the development of socialism.

This book highlights that Soviet economic planners and politicians must come to recognize the need to make fundamental changes, not simply incremental refinements, in the failing Soviet system. It examines the dynamics of the process of perestroika and the complexity of individual economic issues.

Although there is an abundance of scholarly inquiry into the effects on the Soviet socialist system of the historic reforms under Gorbachev's administration, relatively little attention has been paid to the impact these reforms might have on socialism outside the Soviet Union. This book makes a preliminary assessment of the impact of glasnost, perestroika, and related Soviet reforms on selected socialist countries. The sampling of socialist countries studied are roughly representative of the types of socialist states in existence today. The countries studied include Poland, Czechoslovakia, China, Cuba, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and North Korea. The contributors to this volume approach their topics from varying perspectives, each singling out and examining different areas in the individual governments where the impact of Soviet reforms is likely to be strongest. The result is a number of varying conclusions regarding the effects of glasnost and perestroika on the socialist community. In some cases, the impact might be intentional and direct, part of a conscious policy adopted by the Soviet Union. In other cases, the impact may be indirect and even unintentional, given the complex and interdependent nature of world politics and economics. Advanced undergraduate and graduate students with an interest in comparative politics, international relations, and communist studies will find this book a source of stimulating ideas about the rapidly changing face of socialism.

Gorbachev and Perestroika goes beyond most other books on perestroika by covering not only the economy but also personnel policy, culture and foreign affairs. It presents a thorough and broad-ranging assessment and analysis of the Soviet Union at a time when the initial excitement of reform is expanding in cultural and intellectual affairs, radical economic experiments are being tried and political opposition is being more openly discussed.