Radicals control the city councils in Moscow and Leningrad. Protesters call the president a dictator - to his face. Forty-five thousand people daily pass through McDonald's golden arches blocks from the Kremlin.
"The nation is quite different from what it was in the early 1980s," President Mikhail S. Gorbachev told the Soviet Congress last September.Indeed it is.
While repeatedly reminding Soviets and foreigners alike that he is a devout Communist, Gorbachev has borrowed generously from Western democracy and capitalism to try to cure the multitude of ills afflicting his country.
He has freed scores of political prisoners, opened the press to freewheeling reporting on once-taboo subjects, ended the Communist Party's monopoly on power and moved to make the country subject to the rule of law, not the whims of a dictator.
Popularly elected officials, including many with unconventional views, have been brought into the decisionmaking process. Ardent reformers have taken control of the Moscow and Leningrad city councils. Multiple-candidate elections, a strong presidency and a working legislature have been created.
And Gorbachev, ever the pragmatist, has abandoned decades of dogma that blamed the Soviet Union's troubles on the West.
The goal, he has said often, is "humane and democratic socialism" - not a sellout to capitalism.
Ironically, one reason there are so many complaints is that five years of reform have so far failed to improve people's lives.
Many contend the standard of living has fallen severely under Gorbachev. Chronic shortages of food and consumer goods remain, while in the more casual atmosphere, crime and black marketeering have blossomed.
"We remain committed to the choice made in October 1917, the socialist idea," Gorbachev told the Communist Party Central Committee in February. "But we are moving away from its dogmatic interpretation, refusing to sacrifice the people's real interests to rigid schemes."
Such an approach, however, is not shared by all those with whom Gorbachev shares power. Nor is the Soviet populace solidly behind Gorbachev, who has admitted to "mis-calculations and mistakes during perestroika," his program to restructure the Soviet economy.
Tens of thousands of protesters were allowed to march through Red Square on May Day. Some jeered Gorbachev and carried posters comparing him to Nicolae Ceausescu, the Stalinist dictator of Romania executed in December in the midst of a popular uprising.
Gorbachev has shown himself to have a thick skin, sitting through much of the Red Square protest as well as hours of legislative debate that included harsh criticism of his policies. He welcomes what the "democratization" of Soviet society has fostered and advises conservatives not to be upset.
On occasion, however, he has complained bitterly that the press is too negative, headlining society's problems without offering solutions.
Informal political groups, some of them seedlings of alternative parties, have arisen throughout the country. Protesters have driven local leaders from office in dozens of regions.
Although allowing such protests can be risky by exposing leaders directly to the people's wrath, Gorbachev sees the political reawakening of his nation as a way to get people thinking and acting creatively to solve the country's problems.
"One can only welcome the fact that the broad mass of people has become involved in the management of the state and society," he told the legislature.
Inheriting an economy plagued by shortages, long lines, waste and little incentive for workers to produce more or better goods, Gorbachev has looked West for solutions. Although the word "capitalism" isn't creeping into the official vocabulary, "individual enterprise" and "market-oriented economy" are.
In March, the legislature passed a law permitting Soviets for the first time in nearly 70 years to own the "means of production," an approach at odds with classical Marxist doctrine. Karl Marx saw in private ownership the roots of capitalist exploitation; the Russian Revolution 72 years ago supposedly cleansed society of that evil. The new law, which takes effect July 1, allows citizens to own small factories and hire their own workers.
Another law allows peasants to bequeath the state-owned plots they till to their children.
Perhaps the most visible evidence that a touch of capitalism has come to this communist giant is the Moscow McDonald's, a joint venture fostered by McDonald's of Canada. The restaurant, on Pushkin Square six blocks from the Kremlin, serves 45,000 customers daily, Tass reported.
One joke making the rounds in Leningrad implies Gorbachev may be taking the reforms too far, selling out to the West.
The Soviets, the joke goes, decide to try to raise hard currency by auctioning off the Lenin Mausoleum. The Americans are the highest bidder and decide to move the mausoleum to Lafayette Park, across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. One day, Lenin returns from the dead and goes for a stroll. He comes across a typical American supermarket, its shelves fully stocked. Lenin, elated but not realizing where he is, proclaims, "You see what Leninism has brought, comrades!"