Reform and Revolution in the Soviet Union and East-Central Europe

Martial law in Poland opened the 1980s with yet another demonstration of the limits to change in Eastern Europe. Leonid Brezhnev died at the age of seventy-six. The politburo selected Yuri Andropov, as his successor. Andropov quickly initiated a number of reform programs meant to revive the Soviet economy, but he too died, in 1984. His successor, Konstantin Chernenko, was aged and infirm, and it was only when he died in March 1985 that the reformers in the politburo were able to prevail with the election of Mikhail Gorbachev as general secretary of the party. Gorbachev was able to use both the smile and the teeth to push through a whole series of increasingly radical reforms, both economic and political. All of the reforms were interrelated, but they can be classified into four main categories: perestroika, the Russian word for restructuring of the economy; glasnost, meaning openness or publicity; democratization; and new thinking in foreign policy.