Mikhail Gorbachev And Deng Xiaoping

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Who were Mikhail Gorbachev and Deng Xiaoping? Communist leaders or narcissistic bastards? Gorbachev and Xiaoping were known as communist leaders who wanted to modernize their country, and in order to do so, made many new reforms. Communism is a political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs. Deng Xiaoping and Mikhail Gorbachev were both engaged in trying to turn their countries away from what has been called the “Stalinist model.” Although There have been previous efforts to reform the “Stalinist model”, what makes Deng and Gorbachev different is that they not only acknowledge the need to…show more content…
During the 1960s and 1970s, the Soviet Union’s communist leadership kept tight control over the Soviet people. But big changes, including democratic reforms were in the works. This is when Mikhail Gorbachev steps in. Mikhail Gorbachev was the last General Secretary of the Soviet Union. Appointed in 1985, Gorbachev's domestic reforms and nuclear disarmament deals helped end the Cold War but ultimately led to the dramatic downfall of communism in Europe. Gorbachev was a communist who was moving towards democracy, he made this clear with his policy of glasnost and/or openness. Glasnost was a policy that called for increased openness and transparency in government institutions and activities in the Soviet Union. Under glasnost, relaxation of censorship resulted in the Communist Party losing its grip on the media, and Soviet citizens were able to learn significantly more about the past and the outside world. Another policy/ reform made by Gorbachev was Perestroika. Perestroika was the policy or practice of restructuring or reforming the economic and political system. First proposed by Leonid Brezhnev in 1979 and actively promoted by Mikhail Gorbachev, perestroika originally referred to increased automation and labor efficiency, but came to entail greater awareness of economic markets and the ending of central planning. This turned out to be a major fail, and the failure of perestroika was exacerbated by Gorbachev's continual boasting about the results that the reforms would have. Also, Gorbachev publicly predicted an increase in peoples living conditions that never happened, because of this, he was unmasked as an inept planner and of being incapable of making much needed decisions. Another one of Gorbachev’s pitiful failures or reforms if you will was the system of democratization. Democratization was a
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