Perestroika was a process that took place between 1985 and 1991, in the last period of the Soviet Union, and expressed radical changes in the economic, political and social fields. This period began under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In fact, although the foundations of the reforms were laid with Gorbachev taking office in March 1985, the signals of the real transformation emerged with the decisions taken by the Central Committee of the CPSU in January 1987. These decisions aimed to bring the Soviet system into a framework called "new state policy".
Although the reforms seemed to be partially successful in the first years, that is, between 1985 and 1987, the country entered a period of serious instability in the following period. The decline in production, economic crisis and increasing political tensions accelerated the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The main purpose of the reforms was determined to be a broad democratization of the social and political structure, that is, to ensure greater participation of the public in decision-making mechanisms.
In this direction, with the openness policy called Glasnost, censorship was abolished, more space was opened for private initiatives, and a period of softening was entered in relations with Western countries. However, these steps did not yield the results he expected; On the contrary, it deepened the economic stagnation and triggered ethnic conflicts and power struggles in the political sphere.
The term perestroika was first mentioned in Gorbachev's meeting with party members during a trip to Leningrad in 1985. Here he made a call that social and political life should be reorganized. A year later, during his visit to Tolyatti in April 1986, he openly used the word "perestroika" and announced that this term would be used to describe political and economic changes.
As historian Viktor Danilov noted, at that time this concept was understood as the reorganization of some economic functions and connections rather than a radical change of the social and economic structure.
Although 1985 is accepted as the beginning of the reform process, some researchers date this process to an earlier period, even to the leadership years of Yuri Andropov. The economic reform experiments initiated by Andropov in 1983 formed the basis of Gorbachev's policies. During this period, issues such as account-based business, increasing the autonomy of enterprises and supporting cooperatives came to the fore.
In some selected sectors and large enterprises, steps have been taken such as making wages dependent on profits and giving businesses more authority in setting prices.