1988 Reports

Legal Reform in the Soviet Union

Butler, William E.

A law degree in the West is a passport to a vast range of career possibilities: political office, senior corporate management, public administration, consulting, an academic post, banking, diplomatic service, or the practice of law itself. This has not been true in the Soviet Union. Its leaders’ education and experience have been principally in the sciences or engineering, but Mikhail Gorbachev, like Lenin himself, is an exception. A graduate of the Law Faculty of Moscow University, he impressed observers during his first visit to England with his astute grasp of issues, his willingness to listen to and about other points of view, his logical and rational approach to problems, his restrained assertiveness in argument, and his forthright candor in public addresses. He has come to power at a time when Soviet society is altering the balance in leadership personnel from individuals trained to “build” in the technical sense to persons who understand how to operate within complex decision-making hierarchies as social scientists. Gorbachev epitomizes that transition.