The Union: A Long, Mighty Struggle

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This does not make perestroika popular. A middle-aged book translator in Moscow says that votes for Yeltsin were votes against the establishment and Gorbachev. But doesn't Gorbachev represent change? "Who gives a damn about change when you can't buy cheese and aspirin anymore? They've had their circus. Now we want bread." Izvestia reports that when miners in southern Russia lined up for hours to wait for their pay packets, they began to jeer, "And this is perestroika?"

But to see only empty shelves is to miss the remarkable nature of the Soviet reforms. Gorbachev believes that the three prongs of his program are inextricably linked. Demokratizatsiya goes hand in glove with perestroika, he argues, because individual initiative is impossible in a society where decision-making is alienated from the people. And for either prong to work, there must be open discussion of ideas and criticism of the system's flaws. "It is only by combining economic reform with political changes, demokratizatsiya and glasnost that we can fulfill the tasks we have set for ourselves," Gorbachev told a party plenum in October.

On this linkage, Marx would be pleased with Gorbachev: the dialectical process requires understanding the connections between different social and economic forces. In theory, the urge to proceed on all fronts seems logical.

Does it make sense in practice? American politicians have found it more effective to ignore connections and plunge forward on just one or two initiatives at a time. That is the approach Yeltsin advocates. "By heading off in every direction at once, as we have been doing," he said in his interview with TIME in February, "we have hardly made any progress at all as far as the standard of living is concerned."

But Gorbachev's approach is probably the only way to rebuild a system so deeply corroded. The failed reforms of 1965, which attempted to introduce price and profit incentives, showed that tinkering with parts of the economy without a comprehensive overhaul of attitudes was doomed. Linkage is necessary because the economic and social problems all stem from the same root: too much centralization. A system based on bureaucratic commands has failed. Decentralization is necessary. But this cannot occur unless people are allowed the freedom to think for themselves.

One of Gorbachev's goals in the election was to get people engaged in his reforms. He did, with a vengeance. Despite 71 years without practice, Soviets plunged into the fray of open democracy. "We intellectuals always saw % ourselves as the symbol of democracy but thought the people weren't ready for it," says Andrei Voznesensky, a noted Soviet poet. "The joyful thing about all this is that in many ways we have been proved wrong."