Perestroika: : Economic Growth and the USSR’s Final Decade

Sammanfattning: One of the great superpowers in recent history experienced a tumultuous final decade, shining a light on several important policies of economic reform known as perestroika, championed by General Secretary of the USSR Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev. According to, for instance, Stuart and Gregory, the reforms aimed at renewing making the Soviet economy more efficient. In this essay, the impact of the reform on the economy is subject of analysis.The subject is approached the topic via literature research on the topic of 1980s USSR economic problems, combined with key aggregate data on economic conditions (i.e. grain yield production, GDP per capita pre- and post-perestroika, foreign trade, life expectant pre-and post-perestroika). The thesis concluded that perestroika was unable to salvage the USSR, in fact, conditions only worsened after its administration, following into the 1990s.