What impact did Mikhail Gorbachev's ideas of glasnost (openness), perestroika (restructuring) and demokratizatsiia (democratization) have on Communist society? Were these principles compatible with collectivization and a command economy? Did Communist leaders favor these principles or did they feel that their hand were tied once they were introduced into Communist society?

By the time Mikhail Gorbachev ascended to the top position in the Communist Party hierarchy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the nation’s economy had thoroughly ossified, as had the economies of most of its satellite nations in Eastern and Central Europe. How much of an impact on the Soviet Union’s final collapse could be attributable to the policies of U.S. President Ronald Reagan will be debated for years to come, but it is reasonable to conclude that the challenges to Soviet foreign and military policies Reagan posed did influence the thinking of Soviet leaders, including Gorbachev. Reagan’s extensive military build-up stood in stark contrast to the diminishment in U.S. military power that had preceded his election to the presidency. The Soviet Union’s anemic economy strained to keep up with America’s rejuvenation, which represented a reversal of the post-Vietnam/post-Watergate malaise that Reagan’s predecessor, President Jimmy Carter, had illuminated in his famous July 15, 1979 speech in which he referred to the “crisis of confidence” that had permeated American politics and culture.
President Reagan’s presidency and the threat it posed to Soviet calculations coincided with the demise of the leadership of the Soviet Communist Party. Long-time dictator Leonid Brezhnev passed away and his immediate successors, Yuri Andropov (whose rise to the leadership seriously worried Americans given his long tenure as chief of the Soviet intelligence service and secret police, the KGB) and Konstantin Chernenko, each died within around one year of assuming the chairmanship of the Party. The deaths within rapid order of three elderly Communist Party chairmen fed into the ennui that had taken root among many Russian citizens. Into this emotional vacuum stepped Gorbachev, a young, vibrant Party member whose youth and vitality contrasted tremendously with the infirmity of his predecessors.
Gorbachev understood very well that the state of the Soviet economy (as well as the economies of important satellites like East Germany and Poland) and perceptions among Russians of a calcified, unresponsive, and hopelessly corrupt government would invariably lead to the empire’s collapse. The new leader believed that, absent serious reforms to the economy and culture of the Soviet Union, the entire empire could conceivably fail. Stark contrasts between the quality of lives on each side of the Berlin Wall, for example, could no longer be hidden or explained away. Television radio broadcasts from the West provided the captive populaces of the Soviet Bloc with alternative realities to the often-clumsy propaganda that emanated from official government media sources. Gorbachev’s answer to these challenges were labeled “glasnost” (openness to outside, mainly Western, influences as well as to more honest reporting within the Soviet Union regarding the state of the empire), “perestroika” (restructuring of the failed government institutions) and “demokratizatsiia,” a process of democratizing the historically autocratic system of government that dominated Russian and Soviet histories.
The effects of Gorbachev’s policies were profound. The instruments of state power—the KGB, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Armed Forces—were chastened and held up to ridicule and contempt. Government-dominated economics began to give way to open displays of capitalism, thereby rejuvenating the economy while simultaneously further weakening the government’s control of society. The concept of free elections was introduced, thereby giving hopeful Russians and others a newly-inspired taste of political freedom. The effects, while hopeful at first, proved calamitous. A people who had never in their long history known freedom were suddenly experiencing it, and they had little notion of how to respond. As the Communist-controlled government weakened, a vacuum emerged into which stepped avaricious businessmen and former KGB and Communist Party officials eager to reap the dividends of unregulated capitalism. Important industries were sold to wealthy investors few of whom held in high regard the welfare of the broader society.
On top of the anarchy that was emerging in the wake of the government’s restructuring was an open display of contempt and armed resistance that became known as “the August Putsch,” an attempt by military and Communist Party hardliners in 1991 to overthrow Gorbachev and restore communist rule. The coup failed, but Gorbachev was seriously politically weakened and the whole of the Soviet Union collapsed.
The principles that guided Gorbachev’s brief but momentous term in power were entirely incompatible with communist principles and policies. Once Gorbachev weakened the government’s role in the economy and opened the political process, the ideological foundation of the ruling party was effectively destroyed. Free markets and elections are incompatible with communist rule, for which complete control of a society is a prerequisite.
How much Communist Party officials favored Gorbachev’s principles was answered with the attempted coup against Gorbachev. Sides were clearly drawn, and the rise of Gorbachev’s successor, Boris Yeltsin, was born of that tumultuous event. Yeltsin and Gorbachev supporters in the military and among the public were able to defeat the coup attempt, and the last nail in the Party’s coffin was applied. Unlike when the Hungarians, Czechoslovakians, and Poles had sought to throw off the shackles of Soviet control in preceding years, this time there was no overwhelming military response to anti-Communist fervor. The Soviet Army was as divided as the country writ large, with the preponderance of power favoring change.