Plotke observed that, "as Marxism has become more legitimate, its orthodoxies have decayed," and that this occurrence has "opened the way to a creative interaction among theories often considered incompatible."5 He saw the major problem for contemporary Marxism as the credibility of its vision of the "working class leading the world to communism."6 Indeed, Michael Walker observed that Gorbachev did not appear suddenly on the Soviet scene out of nowhere.7 Rather, he was the product of increasing levels of education in Soviet society, and of the ascendancy to power in the Soviet Union of a better educated class. In the context of a society led by a growing body of the well educated, Walker viewed perestroika as inevitable, as opposed to just another effort at reform.8 In this context, Plotke observed that: "Claims about what is possible under socialism now have to be justified persuasively, not simply stated as the obverse of capitalist problems."9 While Soviet accomplishments in sports were significant, they were often achieved at the expense of the life choices of individual athletes, and at the expense of initiative at the sports organization level. Soviet achievement in sports was often sought as a means of demonstrating political superiority. Gorbachev, Mikhail. Perestroika: New Thinking For Our Country and the World. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1987. 7Michael Walker, The Waking Giant (New York: Pantheon Books, Inc., 1986), 132. The Future Implications for Sports In the absence of the primacy of central planning, individual athletes and sports organizations have been able to make their own decisions concerning the emphasis and direction of Soviet sports at the national and international levels.10 On the negative side, the absence of central planning in Soviet sports has meant that guaranteed funding at sufficient levels to assure international competitiveness has disappeared. Soviet sports under perestroika must stand in line with |
