Perestroika

Abstract

The general systems approach has been used to study one of the most intriguing social phenomena in the process of Soviet perestroika. During the period from 1985 to 1991, a dramatic change in public opinion took place from approval of a centralized planning system to overwhelming support for a free-market system. To study the factors that caused this process as well as its performance, a nonlinear model was developed and verified on empirical data. The model has made it possible to trace and identify various stages of perestroika and to comprise different outcomes of a growing conflict between the central and the republican governments that reached its climax in August 1991, after a catastrophic change in public sentiment so impressively demonstrated in the Russian presidential elections in June of the same year.