Ленинградският клуб„Преустройство“ и неговите лидери
The Leningrad ‘Perestroika club’ and its Leaders

Summary/Abstract: The article aims to reconstruct the basic stages in the activity of the Leningrad Interprofessional Club „Perestroika“ (1987–1990) and to offer a brief analysis of the persons involved (the members of the Managing Council and the active members) with regard to their social group affiliation and to their role in the subsequent political and economic reforms in the country. The author has described a number of events in the brief history of the club, important events for the understanding of the activity of this outstanding formation: the circumstances surrounding the generation of the idea and the preceding public discussions on topical problems of the social and political life in the mid 1980s, the establishment of the club and the start of its activity in the Lensovet House of Culture, the organization of public discussions and the generation of the idea of a Popular Front for Support of Perestroika, as well as the participation in the election campaigns in 1989 and 1990. The article shows the role played by the members of the Perestroika Club in subsequent events in the political life of the USSR and Russia, the attempt at reforming the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, its role in the creation of the organs of government in democratic Russia and the development of a multi-party system in Russia. In fact the Leningrad Perestroika Club became a thought factory, a centre of public policy through the part it played in the development of concrete technologies for building a democratic political system in post-Soviet Russia.

• Details
• Contents