Nazarbayev speaks of Perestroika and Chinese reforms

    President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev has spoken about the final years of the Soviet Union and Gorbachev’s Perestroika, Tengrinews reports from Samruk KazynaTransformation Forum in Astana.
    "I had to work in that system – during the Soviet period, and I was one of the critics of Gorbachev's reforms who believed that socialism could be corrected and we could continue on with it. He had an expression - "socialism with a human face”. No one understands what it is. Probably, he meant the one close to the (market) economy,” Nazarbayev said.
    He then continued: “But if state-run companies are governed by corporate market principles, the problem, as you see, is successfully resolved." He added that state companies in China served as the most striking example for Kazakhstan.
    The President noted that he was “close” to Gorbachev and was trying to find a solution to the situation when “Gorbachev’s Perestroika began to stall”.
    Nazarbayev said that he pointed out the lack of a program or a strategy in the Soviet policies and suggested looking to the East – to China.
    “Having exactly the same state structure, the governing power, the Communist Party, which was actually the framework of discipline, it was possible to adopt the resolution like the one of the Central Committee and order the party to carry out market reforms,” Nazarbayev siad.
    He stressed that such reforms would have been implemented because “that was the order” and everything would have been sorted out in the end.
    Nazarbayev quoted Gorbachev as replying: "What is China for us, we are the Soviet Union, how can we look up to China? This is inappropriate."
    “In fact, reforms that were carried out there [in China] gave good results. How it is going to develop further – history will show. But the success was obvious,” the President concluded – as reported by Tengrinews on October 8.