In his book Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World, Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) Central Committee, discusses the rationale and prospects for the farreaching economic and social reforms initiated in the Soviet Union since 1985 under his leadership and presents his views on major issues of contemporary international relations. Since publication of the book preceded by only afew weeks the Soviet leader's visit to the United States in December 1987, the arguments set forth in the book concerning disarmament and Soviet-American relations received particularly close public attention. Gorbachev's discussion of the restructuring (''perestroika") of the Soviet economy and society constitutes, however, the more novel component of the book. In the Preface the author defines ''perestroika" as a "policy of accelerating the country's social and economic progress" and, subsequently, as a ''revolution" and a "decisive acceleration of the socio-economic and cultural development of Soviet society.'" But Gorbachev's exposition makes it clear that "accelerating progress" is a rather euphemistic description of the tasks at hand. "Any delay in beginning perestroika" in the Soviet Union, Gorbachev writes, "could have led to an exacerbated internal situation in the nearfuture" and "would have been fraught with serious social, economic and political crises." This is because of a series of structural problems that "became particularly clear in the latter half of the seventies." The main focus of Gorbachev's discussion is on the inadequacy of the performance of the Soviet economy. ''In the last fifteen years the national income growth rates had declined by more than a half and by the beginning of the eighties had fallen to a level close to economic stagnation." But the problems are not merely economic. ''Declining rates of growth and economic stagnation were bound to affect other aspects of life of Soviet society. Negative trends seriously affected the social sphere. " Among the numerous examples cited by Gorbachev to support this latter point, albeit without illustrative statistics or other attempts at quantification, are rising "parasitical attitudes," low worker morale, increasing crime, and alcohol abuse, which, "especially in the past two decades, has increased at an alarming rate and threatens the very future of the nation." Serious defects also became pervasive on the "ideological plane," the Soviet leader notes. "In the social sciences scholastic theorization was encouraged and developed, but creative thinking was driven out . . . and superfluous and voluntarist assessment and judgments were declared indisputable truths. " Population issues, as such, are not singled out for sustained attention in Perestroika. Gorbachev deplores "the glaring shortcomings" in the quality of Soviet