Gorbachev’s economic changes did little to restart the country’s sluggish economy in the late 1980s. The reforms decentralized economic activity to a certain extent, but price controls remained, as did the ruble’s inconvertibility and most government controls over the means of production. By 1...
Almost no one expected the Soviet Union to come suddenly to an end. The effects of this event on literature have been enormous. The period ofglasnost(verbal openness) under Gorbachev and the subsequent collapse of the U.S.S.R. led first to a dramatic easing and then to the abolition of ...