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[Bearbeiten] Unforeseen results of reform
Gorbachev's new system bore the characteristics of neither central planning nor a market economy. Instead, the Soviet economy went from stagnation to deterioration. At the end of 1991, when the union officially dissolved, the national economy was in a virtual tailspin. In 1991 Soviet GDP had declined by 17 percent and was declining at an accelerating rate. Overt inflation was becoming a major problem. Between 1990 and 1991, retail prices in the Soviet Union increased 140 percent.
Under these conditions, the general quality of life for the Soviet people deteriorated. The public traditionally faced shortages of durable goods, but under Gorbachev, food, clothes, and other basic necessities were in short supply. Fueled by the liberalized atmosphere of Gorbachev's glasnost and by the general improvement in information access in the late 1980s, public dissatisfaction with economic conditions was much more overt than ever before in the Soviet period. The foreign-trade sector of the Soviet economy also showed signs of deterioration. The total Soviet hard-currency debt increased appreciably, and the Soviet Union, which had established an impeccable record for debt repayment in earlier decades, had accumulated sizable arrears by 1990. It did free up the arts and social sciences in the region and enabled formerly banned literature and films to be eviscerated to a degree, with filmmakers like Sergei Parajanov now out of prison.
In sum, the Soviet Union left a legacy of economic inefficiency and deterioration to the fifteen constituent republics after its breakup in December 1991. Arguably, the shortcomings of the Gorbachev reforms had contributed to the economic decline and eventual destruction of the Soviet Union, leaving Russia and the other successor states to pick up the pieces and to try to mold market economies. At the same time, the Gorbachev programs did start Russia on the precarious road to full-scale economic reform.
The failure of perestroika have led Alexander Zinovyev to coin the word catastroika, Russian катастройка, an amalgamation of катастрофа - "catastrophe" and perestroyka) Zinovyev wrote: "the effect of explanatory work has appeared the return desirable. All what wished to avoid, has occurred to the double force... Queues were extended. The prices in the markets have jumped up. At home, in queues, in transport, on work, at assemblies people have openly worn the perestroyka. Uncountable jokes were told. Someone has learned, that the word "perestroyka" is translated on the Greek language by a word "accident". On this basis a new word "katastroyka" has appeared. Pensioners and old members of a party have seen in perestroyka the counterrevolution and treason towards the Lenin's cause". Philip Hanson used this word in his book, From Stagnation to Catastroika: Commentaries on the Soviet Economy, 1983-1991.
