MOSCOW, November 7 (RIA Novosti) - Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has
said that the Obama administration in the United States needs far-reaching
'perestroika' reforms to overcome the financial crisis and restore balance in
the world.
The term perestroika, meaning restructuring, was used by Gorbachev in the
late 1980s to describe a series of reforms that abolished state planning in the
Soviet Union.
In an interview with Italy's La Stampa published on Friday, Gorbachev said
President-elect Barack Obama needs to fundamentally change the misguided course
followed by President George W. Bush over the past eight years.
Gorbachev said that after transforming his country in the late 1980s, he had
told the Americans that it was their turn to act, but that Washington,
celebrating its Cold War victory, was not interested in "a new model of a
society, where politics, economics and morals went hand in hand."