The Union: A Long, Mighty Struggle

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In fact, to pronounce perestroika either a success or a failure at this stage is to misperceive its nature. At best, it is the beginning of a protracted and massive undertaking that could take a generation or more. "During the past 70 years, a new man has been created who is obedient and easily frightened," says the poet Bulat Okudzhava, a veteran Soviet-reform advocate. "What has been created over decades cannot be undone in a day." Energizing an empire of 285 million people and turning it into a modern economy ranks among the most daunting tasks of modern times, as audacious as Deng Xiaoping's Four Modernizations or Franklin Roosevelt's creation of a new social welfare state.

Like Dr. Johnson's remark about dogs who walk upright and women who preach, the amazing thing about perestroika is not that the Soviets are doing it well but that they are doing it at all. "We so quickly and lightly overlook the remarkable existence of perestroika and focus on the obstacles," says Robert Legvold, director of Columbia University's Averell Harriman Institute, "that we underestimate the significance of the fact that it has begun at all." Whatever happens, and whatever course it finally takes, the Gorbachev revolution has already become one of the greatest dramas and most momentous events of the second half of the 20th century.

Five of the six men who have led the Soviet Union have clung to power until their deaths. But the one exception -- Nikita Khrushchev, the earthy reformer of a generation ago -- stands as a cautionary reminder of the perils of perestroika. The combination of glasnost and demokratizatsiya runs the risk of giving conservatives the chance to point to a breakdown in social order. This is a major consideration in one of the most order-obsessed regimes on earth. Gorbachev's situation, like the fate of his reforms, will thus remain precarious.

Gorbachev has been able to demote but not purge from the Communist Party's ruling Politburo Yegor Ligachev, his conservative thorn. Ligachev and his allies, who include former KGB chief Victor Chebrikov, could become even more antagonistic out of dismay at the fate of fellow party traditionalists in the election. None is likely to try to pull off a coup, but it is possible that they could force Gorbachev to water down the reforms.

Even if Gorbachev is reined in, or toppled, the seeds he has sown in the Soviet mind and the changes he has already wrought will leave an indelible mark. The reforms of Khrushchev and Kosygin were squelched, but the ideas they planted blossomed a quarter-century later in a new generation of leadership. As Gorbachev told Henry Kissinger when he visited Moscow earlier this year, "At any rate, things will never be the same again in the Soviet Union." Notes Kissinger: "This would be a modest result for so Herculean a task." Yes, but once again the contradiction is also true: the fact that the Soviet Union has been so deeply altered that it will never again be exactly the same is of monumental historic significance.