The changes which have transformed Soviet and now post-Soviet life in the period since 1985 have been as wide ranging and important as those that shaped the structure of Soviet society at the end of the 1920s and early 1930s. As Gorbachev and others have acknowledged, this constitutes a veritable revolution. Some would argue that this was a ‘revolution from above’, although this is a designation which Gorbachev disputed. As earlier chapters have shown, there has been significant impetus from below in the course of the changes, and this has not just been of a mobilisational kind; political forces stemming from society as a whole have been important in shaping the contours of change and providing much of the impetus for its development. Nevertheless, the role played by the political elite has been substantial both in initiating the changes and in giving them their flavour. An important aspect of this was the attempt to construct an institutional and regulatory framework for perestroika. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to talk about an attempt at revolution by legal fiat as the central authorities sought to set in place a panoply of laws designed to restrict some developments and to foster others. The central strand of this was the process of democratisation and the attempt to promote and structure this through legislative enactment. It was this official attempt to consolidate democratisation that is meant by the term ‘democracy from above’.