Gorbachev plays Bonaparte
"In moving along the path of perestroika, we saw the crisis battering the country was immeasurably deeper and more serious than expected. Problems and contradictions, piling up within the social system for decades, have burst into the open ... We hoped to mount the peak of the crisis in 1989, but recent events have shown that there has been no change for the better."
(Mikhail Gorbachev, speaking to the central committee, February 5, 1990.)
IT WAS enshrined in Article 6 of the Soviet constitution. It was imposed through a mixture of patronage, corrup tion and brute force; it was the theoretical justification for the existence of a parallel goverment at all levels of the state which makes all the decisions and controls all appointments; it has been the central political mechanism which the