The main foreign policy impact of the reform was the realization that the Soviet Union needed to cut defence spending. He also sacked Party and industry officials in various areas, with positive results. This was initially actually quite successful 1 and output grew. He initiated a crackdown on alcoholism in an attempt to increase productivity and stressed the need for discipline among workers. Gorbachev made efforts to change the very heart of Russian culture. "The final goal of perestroika, it seems is clear: a profound renewal of all aspects of the nation's life, imparting to socialism the most contemporary forms of social organizations, and the most complete disclosure of the humanitarian character of our society in all its decisive aspects- economic, social-political, and moral." Nor should this be seen purely as economic in its goals (especially when partnered with glasnost). Much like the Reformation, the heretics set out to reform their beloved system and ultimately destroyed it.
We should realize from the off that this was not an attempt to turn the Soviet Union into a capitalist state ( Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms in China aimed to do this to China), but simply to reform within the system. "The main idea of our strategy is to unite the achievements of the scientific- technical revolution with a planned economy and to bring into action the entire potential of socialism." It became the unintended catalyst that eventually caused the collapse of the system it aimed to preserve. Discussed at the Twenty-Seventh Party Conference in 1986, perestroika was Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of reform ( economic, social and political) in the Soviet Union in an attempt to save the floundering economy.
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