] I have a lasting admiration for Mikhail Gorbachev. It is
] an admiration shared by all who know that, but for his
] initiatives, the world might still be living under the
] shadow of the catastrophe of a nuclear war - and that the
] transition from the communist to the post-communist era
] in eastern Europe, and in most non-Caucasian parts of the
] former USSR, has proceeded without significant bloodshed.
] His place in history is secure.
]
]
] But did perestroika bring about a second Russian
] revolution? No. It brought the collapse of the system
] built on the 1917 revolution, followed by a period of
] social, economic and cultural ruin, from which the
] peoples of Russia have by no means yet fully emerged.
] Recovery from this catastrophe is already taking much
] longer than it took Russia to recover from the world
] wars.
]
]
] Whatever will emerge from this era of post-Soviet
] catastrophe was not envisaged, let alone prepared, by
] perestroika, not even after the supporters of perestroika
] had realised that their project of a reformed communism,
] or even a social-democratised USSR, was unrealisable. It
] was not even envisaged by those who came to believe that
] the aim should be a fully capitalist system of the
] liberal western - more precisely, the American - model.
]
]
] The end of perestroika precipitated Russia into a space
] void of any real policy, except the unrestricted free
] market recommendations of western economists who were
] even more ignorant of how the Soviet economy functioned
] than their Russian followers were of how western
] capitalism operated. On neither side was there serious
] consideration of the necessarily lengthy and complex
] problems of transition. Nor, when the collapse came,
] given its speed, could there have been.

article by historian Eric Hobsbawm