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Perestroika: New Thinking For Our Country And The World

Mikhail S. Gorbachev
Reviewed by By John C. Campbell
Spring 1988
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Mikhail S. Gorbachev
Bessie/Harper & Row
1987
254 pp.
$19.95

The Soviet leader describes his and the Communist Party's program of restructuring as radical and even revolutionary (as indeed it may be in time), although the specifics he gives on economic reform, democratization and openness-interlaced with standard formulas and exhortations-hardly merit those adjectives. Nevertheless, in this remarkable (though hastily concocted and repetitious) book he speaks out in ways his predecessors never did, and there is no doubt that fresh winds are blowing, no doubt about his determination to get Russia moving again. His "new thinking" on foreign policy-peaceful coexistence, negotiated disarmament, renunciation of nuclear war, settlement of regional disputes, economic cooperation-is couched in phrases that have been heard before; their real content will be seen in practice. If he is sincere, the world should benefit; if not, it is still good propaganda.

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