On Jun 17, 2009, at 2:27 PM, Chris Doss wrote:
> BTW Perestroika was not an invention of Gorbachev. It was born out
> of think-tanks run under the auspices of his (much more competent)
> mentor, Andropov. This is not surprising, since the KGB, which
> Andropov headed, had been pushing for economic liberalization since
> the early 1970s.
Yea, this is an important point which analysts in the "West" rarely make. The Soviet transformation was an elite project, not a mass uprising or the bearing fruit of internal contradictions.