perestroika

In Soviet politics, the wide-ranging economic and political reforms initiated from 1985 by Mikhail Gorbachev, finally leading to the demise of the Soviet Union. Originally, in the economic sphere, perestroika was conceived as involving ‘intensive development’ concentrating on automation and improved labour efficiency. It evolved to attend increasingly to market indicators and incentives (‘market socialism’) and the gradual dismantling of the Stalinist central-planning system, with decision-taking being devolved to self-financing enterprises.