Fabergé, Perestroika and Navalny.

When the new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, came to power in 1985, the Soviet economy had been stagnant for twenty years. Annual GDP was going down. Shelves in stores were empty and food lines were long.

Gorbachev declared it was time for radical change.

He launched a series of economic and political reforms, called “perestroika” [reconstruction], t…