perestroika: [20] Along with glasnost, perestroika was catapulted into English from Russian in the mid-1980s by Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms in the Soviet Union. It means literally ‘rebuilding, reconstruction, reform’, and is a compound formed from pere- ‘re-’ and stroika ‘building, construction’. In the context of Gorbachev’s sweeping changes, it denotes a ‘sweeping restructuring of Soviet society, industry, etc’.
1981, from Russian perestroika, literally "rebuilding, reconstruction, reform" (of Soviet society, etc.), from pere- "re-" (from Old Russian pere- "around, again," from Proto-Slavic *per-, from PIE *per- (1) "forward, through;" see per) + stroika "building, construction," from Old Russian stroji "order," from PIE *stroi-, from root *stere- "to spread" (see structure (n.)). First proposed at the 26th Party Congress (1981); popularized in English 1985 during Mikhail Gorbachev's leadership of the U.S.S.R.
双语例句
1. In doing so, he is stirring ghosts of perestroika in the late 1980 s.
