Perestroika and the Soviet People :

A 1st ed. very good- paperback, minor signs of wear on cov. as in image, text/block tight clean. 207p. 23x15cm. 400gr.

Introduction: The essays in this volume were written between January 1989 and June 1991. All but the final one have been published earlier. They have been edited minimally with a view to avoiding repetition, but the original analyses have not been modified. This introduction, written two weeks after the abortive coup of August 19-21 1991 that led Gorbachev to call for the dissolution of the Communist Party, presents an appropriate occasion to look back and to evaluate the point of view that has informed this book.
This point of view is socialist. By this I mean simply that my point of departure was a concern for democracy in the most basic sense of the term: government for and by the people. Among other things, this means that the basic decisions about the economy, certainly the most fundamental sphere of social life, cannot be left in the private hands of a privileged minority. In contrast, it is just such a "revolution from above", one that would transform the mode of domination without eliminating domination, that was, and remains, the aim of the bureaucratic reformers who initiated perestroika. This aim is shared by their radical liberal sometime critics and sometime allies. (…)