Where did Perestroika take us? What were its goals? Who were its activists? Who were its opponents? Who was Gorbachev? Who was Yeltsin? Who is Putin? How does leftist criticism from those years read? What lessons does the Russian left draw from the collapse of real socialism? What influence has it been able to exert on development? What alternatives is it developing today? For Russia? Beyond Russia? Ten months after the actual start of the 500-Day Program, the ideological climate will be the complete opposite of what it is now. Liberalism and capitalism will be more hated than communism is now. This was stated by Boris Kagarlitsky, the most prominent reformist Marxist in today's Russia, in September 1990, in light of the transition from Gorbachev's reform of socialism to Yeltsin's course of forced privatization. The circumstances are in a constant state of fluctuation.