What Went Wrong with Perestroika (Updated) [Paperback]

Marshall I. Goldman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 17, 1992

"Once again, Marshall Goldman has put his finger directly on the problems that hamper reform in the Soviet Union. Anyone who wants to understand Gorbachev's failings, the bureaucratic infighting and built-in reluctance to change will gain insights from this taut, readable book."—Hedrik Smith

A critical analysis of the economic reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev, which claims that the Soviet leader did little to counter the nation's overindulgence in heavy industry or to combat a burgeoning budget deficit. The resultant economic collapse, it is argued, led to political disintegration.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Recent Soviet events, including the failed August 1991 coup, are given a convincing ipso facto explanation by a noted Harvard economist, who finds the key to Gorbachev's failures in a lethal mix of ideological conservatism, isolation from real conditions, and an attempt to please everyone by including political enemies in his governing coalitions. Whether anyone could have done better is doubtful, Goldman writes, since peaceful change has never come easily to Russian society. Such fatalism aside, the author clearly shows how Gorbachev's economic "reforms" succeeded in creating mass confusion and encouraging "protectionism" all the way down to the municipal level: so alienating society as to give "reform" itself a bad name. A readable and timely introduction for general readers.
-Robert Decker, Los Angeles
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

Lucid--and, as recent events attest, prescient--examination of Gorbachev's domestic performance, which Goldman (Gorbachev's Challenge, 1987, etc.) argues has led to the economic collapse and political disintegration of the USSR. Goldman performs what he terms an ``autopsy'' on Gorbachev's failure to reform his nation. While praising the Soviet leader's stalwart efforts, the author contends that Gorbachev made several serious mistakes in repeatedly reversing his policy course. Starting out with a traditional emphasis on the machine-tool industry and on the creation of superministries as the basis of wide-scale reform, Gorbachev learned in less than two years that such means would yield only minor adjustments. According to Goldman, Gorbachev then (at the same time he was promoting human- rights reforms and glasnost) tried out an inconsistent series of new approaches, swinging toward a market economy, then away. Economic advisors came and went; comprehensive plans were proposed, modified, shelved; central planning weakened, and factory managers first bartered with each other for supplies, then closed down plants or reduced production. Goldman points out that, unlike in the West, where economic depression is generally caused by lack of demand, in the USSR a depression has arisen from a collapse in supply. The author also explores the political and economic landscape Gorbachev inherited, his rise from an obscure farm town to international fame, the resistance of hard-liners, and the possible future of reform. Incisive and expert road map to the intricacies of recent Soviet history. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 282 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; Updated edition (August 17, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393309045
• ISBN-13: 978-0393309041
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,121,676 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #56 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > History > Russia

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Platitudes, received ideas and factual inaccuracies, February 13, 2001

By 

Andrew Yorke (Oxford, England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: What Went Wrong with Perestroika (Updated) (Paperback)

I understand that Marshall Goldman is/was an esteemed economist at Harvard. To be fair, it is easy to look back on his book (last updated soon after the August 1991 coup) with critical hindsight. However, it has been claimed in the main review that this book was "prescient". So it seems reasonable to point out that Goldman got a lot wrong. His repeated emphasis on the need for early and rapid privatisation (by which I mean selling off state enterprises) as a key part of successful economic reform, for starters. Goldman's economic diagnosis and prescribed cure are merely a mapping of received ideas about economics onto a country without paying much attention to how those prescriptions would actually take effect in this particular situation. "Privatisation is good, it says so in this textbook, so Gorbachev needs to privatise everything now. Inflation is bad, so Gorbachev needs to stop printing money." etc. etc. We now know what effect this kind of thinking has had on the people of the former Soviet Union. But what really bothers me about this book is that it contains factual inaccuracies, which I'm sure were just typos but should have been weeded out. The transliteration of Russian words is erratic to say the least, which leads me to suspect that Goldman's knowledge of Russian was close to non-existent at the time (but hey, who needs to know the language of a country before you start drawing up recipes for its reform?). And finally, it's just plain badly written.