Gorbachev calls for perestroika in West

US: Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev called Sunday for a perestroika, or top-to-bottom reform, in the West, arguing that its current economic model was “unsustainable” and needed replacement.

Commenting on the current global economic crisis, the ex-Soviet president who presided over the collapse of his country, said that it was now clear to him “that the new Western model was an illusion that benefited chiefly the very rich.

“The model that emerged during the final decades of the 20th century has turned out to be unsustainable,” Gorbachev wrote in an op-ed piece in The Washington Post. “It was based on a drive for super-profits and hyper-consumption for a few, on unrestrained exploitation of resources and on social and environmental irresponsibility.”

Gorbachev predicted “perhaps even greater upheaval down the road” and insisted that the current economic and social model existing in the West needed replacing.

“I have no ready-made prescriptions,” Gorbachev said. “But I am convinced that a new model will emerge, one that will emphasize public needs and public goods, such as a cleaner environment, well-functioning infrastructure and public transportation, sound education and health systems and affordable housing.”

From the mid-1980s, Gorbachev was the initiator of a series of fundamental reforms in the Soviet Union, which eventually led to its 1991 collapse.

Washington, Sunday, AFP