The purported goal of perestroika was not to end the planned economy but rather to make socialism work more efficiently to better meet the needs of Soviet citizens by adopting elements of liberal economics.

[2] The process of implementing perestroika added to existing shortages, and created political, social, and economic tensions within the Soviet Union.

[10] Gorbachev had concluded that implementing his reforms outlined at the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress in February 1986 required more than discrediting the "Old Guard", those with a Marxist-Leninist political orientation.

During the initial period (1985–87) of Mikhail Gorbachev's time in power, he talked about modifying central planning but did not make any truly fundamental changes (uskoreniye; "acceleration").

However, at the same time the state still held control over the means of production for these enterprises, thus limiting their ability to enact full-cost accountability.

[14][citation needed] For the first time since Vladimir Lenin's New Economic Policy was abolished in 1928, the law permitted private ownership of businesses in the services, manufacturing, and foreign-trade sectors.

The law initially imposed high taxes and employment restrictions, but it later revised these to avoid discouraging private-sector activity.

Under the terms of the Joint Venture Law, the Soviet partner supplied labor, infrastructure, and a potentially large domestic market.

The foreign partner supplied capital, technology, entrepreneurial expertise, and in many cases, products and services of world competitive quality.

[17] Gorbachev's reforms were gradualist and maintained many of the macroeconomic aspects of the planned economy (including price controls, inconvertibility of the ruble, exclusion of private property ownership, and the government monopoly over most means of production).

Perestroika was expected to lead to results such as market pricing and privately sold produce, but the Union dissolved before advanced stages were reached.

Gorbachev acknowledged this difference but maintained that it was unavoidable and that perestroika would have been doomed to defeat and revanchism by the nomenklatura without glasnost, because conditions in the Soviet Union were not identical to those in China.

[20] Gorbachev cited a line from a 1986 newspaper article that he felt encapsulated this reality: "The apparatus broke Khrushchev's neck and the same thing will happen now.

[citation needed] One of the final important measures taken on the continuation of the movement was a report from the central committee meeting of the CPSU titled "On Reorganization and the Party's Personnel Policy".

In fact, "no bailout for Gorbachev" was a consistent policy line of the Bush administration, further demonstrating the lack of true support from the West.

President Bush had the opportunity to aid the Soviet Union in a way to bring closer ties between the governments, like Harry S. Truman did for many nations in Western Europe.

Bush continued to dodge helping the Russians and the President of Czechoslovakia, Václav Havel, laid bare the linkage for the Americans in his address to a joint session of Congress on 21 February 1990: ...

My reply is as paradoxical as the whole of my life has been: You can help us most of all if you help the Soviet Union on its irreversible, but immensely complicated road to democracy....[T]he sooner, the more quickly, and the more peacefully the Soviet Union begins to move along the road toward genuine political pluralism, respect for the rights of nations to their own integrity and to a working—that is a market—economy, the better it will be, not just for Czechs and Slovaks, but for the whole world.When the United States needed help with Germany's reunification, Gorbachev proved to be instrumental in bringing solutions to the "German problem" and Bush acknowledged that "Gorbachev was moving the USSR in the right direction".