Corrective Movement (Syria)

Corrective Movement (Arabic: الحركة التصحيحية, romanized: al-Ḥarakah at-Taṣḥīḥīyya) was the political, social and economic program, launched by Hafez al-Assad, soon after his seizure of power in the 1970 Ba'athist coup d'etat in Syria. Assad later compared the Corrective Movement program to Mikhail Gorbachev's future perestroika program. The main policies of the program included a shift away from radicalism in the Ba'athist project of socialist transformation of society, expansion of mass recruitment into the Ba'ath Party, and a limited degree of economic and political liberalization.

The Corrective Movement program was the new government's reaction to the results of the extremely radical and aggressive policies of its predecessor, Salah Jadid, and was marked by a number of political and economic relaxations and changes (especially in the first decade). Reforms eventually succeeded in eradicating some of the far-left policies of the radical Ba'athists who preceded him and improved relations with the Sunni Arab merchant class. Program also led to the huge militarization of Syria and constitutional centralization of power in president's hands.

When the communist regimes in the Eastern Bloc collapsed, an ideological crisis within the government arose. However, Assad and his supporters hit back, stating that because of the "Corrective Movement under the leadership of the warrior Hafez al-Assad", the principles of economic and political pluralism, which had been introduced "some two decades" beforehand, safeguarded the Syrian government from the possibility of collapse.

However, as a result of the program, Syria also faced a number of economic and political problems, such as shortages of goods and austerity policy in the 1980s, as well as the formation of a totalitarian Assadist dictatorship and the gradual isolation of Syria from the entire region.