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Further Reading

1985-1991 - Mikhail S. Gorbachev

In contrast to the uncertain handling of leadership vacancies in 1982 and 1984, upon the death of Chernenko the Politburo acted within hours to choose unanimously the healthy and relatively youthful Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev as general secretary. In his speech before the Central Committee, Gorbachev announced that he would emphasize policies of labor discipline and increased productivity, calling for a "scientific and technological revolution" to revive heavy industry.

How did Gorbachev become the man who dismantled the Soviet system? Childhood, of course, is where biography begins, Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev was born March 2, 1931 in Privolnoye village in Stavropol territory. Gorbachev joined the CPSU in 1952, attended Moscow State University (1950-1955), and graduated with a degree in law from Moscow State University in 1955. From 1955, he was first secretary of the Stavropol Komsomol City Committee. Gorbachev returned to Stavropol after graduating from Moscow University, rather than remaining in or near the capital. The kind of position he hoped to land in Moscow, in the Procurator's Office, turned out to be closed to young people like him as a result of the post-Stalin's regime's realization that, under pressure from their superiors, younger Procurator staffers in Stalin's time had proven too ready and willing to overlook the terrible injustices meted out during the purges. Compared to his predecessors, Gorbachev was less directly influenced by World War II, and he made his early career in the domestic and "peaceful" sectors of Soviet society.

In 1967, he completed a correspondence course and graduated from the Stavropol Agricultural Institute. And in 1970 Gorbachev was elected to the Central Committee of the CPSU. He was appointed agriculture secretary of the Central Committee in 1978 and moved from Stavropol to Moscow. Gorbachev became a full member of the Politburo in 1980. Even in his early career there were signs that Gorbachev was more than just another bright young apparatchik on the make. The spectacular rise to power of Mikhail Gorbachev apparently began earlier than once thought in the West. It soon became clear that his route to the top was assured long before his formal assumption of the General Secretary's post following the death of Konstantin Chernenko in March 1985. His rise was, in part, due to the support of influential ideologue Mikhail Suslov.

Under General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Yuri Andropov, from 1982 to 1984, Gorbachev was a prominent member of the Politburo, helping to bring a new generation of politicians into the top level of government. From 1984 to 1985, he served as chairman for the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Soviet Union. In March 1985, Gorbachev became general secretary, the first leader of the Soviet Union to have been born after the October Revolution.

Gorbachev quickly changed the composition of the highest CPSU and government bodies, eliminating Brezhnev-era appointees and promoting allies. This partly explains the adroit consolidation of power and elimination of rivals at the upper levels of the party and state which Gorbachev orchestrated in the first year of his administration. Grigory Romanov, former Leningrad Party chief and once believed the most likely heir to Andropov and Chernenko, was removed from the Politburo in disgrace over abuses of his position. Other prominent figures, such as Prime Minister Nikolai Tikhonov and Moscow Party head Viktor Grishin were packed off into retirement.

Perhaps most important, Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko was "promoted" to the largely ceremonial post of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. Among the major changes in the July 1985 Central Committee plenum, Gorbachev promoted Georgian party first secretary Eduard Shevardnadze to full membership in the Politburo and nominated him as minister of foreign affairs, while Boris N. Yeltsin made his national political debut as one of two members added to the CPSU Secretariat. In December Yeltsin advanced again, this time as first secretary of the Moscow city committee of the party.

At the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress in February 1986, Gorbachev reaffirmed much of the existing CPSU doctrine and policies, giving little indication of future reforms. While calling for "radical reforms" in the economy, he merely reemphasized the need to increase production and to use more advanced technology in heavy industry. The new party program contained no surprises, and the congress made few changes in high-level CPSU bodies. Among the significant changes that did occur were the appointment to the Central Committee Secretariat of Aleksandr Yakovlev, an advocate of radical reform and the exposure of Stalin's crimes, and the promotion of Yeltsin to candidate membership in the Politburo. It was at this party gathering that Yeltsin first offended conservatives by denouncing the hidden privileges of the party elite.

Gorbachev increasingly found himself caught between criticism by conservatives who wanted to stop reform and liberals who wanted to accelerate it. When one of these groups pressed too hard, Gorbachev resorted to political methods from the Brezhnev era. For example, when Yeltsin spoke out in 1987 against the slow pace of reform, he was stripped of his Politburo and Moscow CPSU posts. At the party meeting where Yeltsin was removed from his post, Gorbachev personally subjected him to verbal abuse reminiscent of the Stalin era.

Despite some setbacks, reform efforts continued. In June 1988, at the CPSU's Nineteenth Party Conference, the first held since 1941, Gorbachev launched radical reforms meant to reduce party control of the government apparatus. He again called for multicandidate elections for regional and local legislatures and party first secretaries and insisted on the separation of the government apparatus from party bodies at the regional level as well. In the face of an overwhelming majority of conservatives, Gorbachev still was able to rely on party discipline to force through acceptance of his reform proposals. Experts called the conference a successful step in promoting party-directed change from above.

At an unprecedented emergency Central Committee plenum called by Gorbachev in September 1988, three stalwart old-guard members left the Politburo or lost positions of power. Andrey Gromyko retired from the Politburo, Yegor Ligachev was relieved of the ideology portfolio within the Secretariat, and Boris Pugo replaced Politburo member Mikhail Solomentsev as chairman of the powerful Party Control Committee. The Supreme Soviet then elected Gorbachev chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. These changes meant that the Secretariat, until that time solely responsible for the development and implementation of party policies, had lost much of its power.