Suchergebnisse

This is a sequel to an article written by the same author, which was published in theJournalin 1986. The current pace of economic and political reform in the Soviet Union represents a 'paradigm' change, which Western specialists have found difficult and challenging to assimilate; concepts have lagged behind events. The key to understanding these changes and the reason why they have been so long delayed lies in the fusion of economic and political institutions formed during the Stalin period. The interdependence of economic and political factors is explored as a basis for understanding why political reform has been a necessary accompaniment to economic reform. One can discern in the pattern of political reform an attempt to increase the level of democratization without fundamentally destabilizing the political and social order. Since this strategy requires that a new political culture will take root faster than the growth of popular discontent at deteriorating economic performance and frustrated national aspirations, the author is pessimistic as to the outcome.

Reform process before and after 1986; link between the political and economic components of perestroika, and the strategy behind the current reform.

For most of the seventeenth century, natural philosophers in Europe were confronted with two opposing views of the universe: the traditional Ptolemaic view and the emerging Copernican view. The former was slow to give way to the latter because it could be adequately supported by evidence, and its adherents, for reasons of professional status, had a vested interest in maintaining its theoretical integrity. Initially, the Copernican view possessed only the advantage of elegance. After much heated and 'incommensurable' discussion, the argument was only resolved finally when the older generation of scientists died out and the growing volume of observational anomalies overwhelmed the capacity of the traditional approach to explain them away.

Underlying motivations of the elite and forces for and against change.