Gorbachev’s Pandora’s Box: Perestroika (1985-1991)

Founder of a new communist utopia, caretaker of communism, man of chaos, man of order, destructor of the empire, first statesman of the 2000s, hope for a new socialism, siren that fool people, new Lenin, new Stalin, new Khrushchev, a Soviet Churchill, last Czar, post communist, absolute monarch, dictator by force, liquidator of the Cold War, sneaky realist.

Very few statesmen had such discordant and powerful descriptions, and few had the honor to be the hero and the villain in just few years in power. That statesman is Mikhail Sergeevic Gorbachev, the man behind some the most important events in the 20^th Century: the end of the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Political formation

Mikhail Gorbachev was born on 2 March 1931 in the village of Privolnoye, Stavropol Krai, then in the Russian Soviet Republic. In 1946, he joined Komsomol, the Soviet political youth organization, becoming leader of his local group and then elected to the committee. In June 1950, Gorbachev became a candidate member of the Communist Party, and he also applied to study at the law school of Moscow State University. Gorbachev studied at Moscow State University from 1950 to 1955, graduating with a distinction.

In August 1955, he started to work for the Komsomol in Stavropol, becoming deputy director for the agitation and propaganda department. When Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin and his cult of personality, in a speech given in February 1956, Gorbachev helped spreading the anti-Stalinist message in Stavropol. His career started to accelerate in the following ten years:

September 1956: First Secretary of the Stavropol city’s Komsomol

April 1958: deputy head for the entire region.

March 1961: First Secretary of the regional Komsomol.

January 1963: Personnel chief for the regional party’s agricultural committee.

September 1966: First Secretary of the Stavropol City Party Organization Gorkom. 

August 1968: Second Secretary of the Stavropol Kraikom, the second most senior figure in the region.

1969: elected as a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, and member of its Standing Commission for the Protection of the Environment.

In April 1970, Gorbachev became the First Secretary of the Stavropol Kraikom, granting him significant power over the Stavropol region. As head of the Stavropol region, he automatically became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1971.

Gorbachev fostered good relations inside the party, maintained Brezhnev’s trust, the head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, was favorable towards him, developed good relationships with the Soviet Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin, and the senior party member Mikhail Suslov. This relationship led the government to consider Gorbachev sufficiently reliable, and was sent as part of Soviet delegations to Western Europe. In 1977, the Supreme Soviet appointed Gorbachev to chair the Standing Commission on Youth Affairs due to his experience with mobilizing young people in Komsomol. In November 1978, Gorbachev was appointed Secretary of the Central Committee, approved unanimously by the Central Committee’s members. In 1978, Gorbachev was appointed to the Central Committee’s Secretariat for Agriculture, becoming, in October 1980, a full member of the Politburo, the highest decision-making authority in the Communist Party. At the time, he was the Politburo’s youngest member.

Rise to power and political scenario

The Soviet Union at the end of the 70 and beginning of 80 was experiencing a grave crisis, especially under an economic point of view. The need to discuss potential reforms and change of course could not be postponed anymore, and even for the stagnant leadership of Brezhnev the time had come for the difficult decisions. On one side there were those who pushed for an immediate change, and on the other those who wanted to keep the status quo. However, the Brezhnevian stagnation had profound impact and negative effects, meaning that a simple correction was not possible and political compromise of the views was not possible anymore.

Brezhnev policies had profound repercussions, creating an unbalance economic structure in the country, abandoning the investments in key sectors of the industry for most of the 70s and letting rot most of the productive structure, as a result the Soviet Union was in a serious downturn and with a technological gap with the West. The leadership erroneously believed that the machine could be restarted by simply increasing and re-distributing the quotes of the social products to favor general consume, seen as a solution for the wellbeing of the people. However, the index of growth for industrial, agricultural, labor, and investment was touching the historic minimum record of the Soviet history. It was said that the Soviet Union was in the unpleasant position of having all factors of development in the wrong place: industrial structure in the west, labor force in the south, energy resources in the north and east. Bringing these factors together, and make them interconnected, was an arduous task for a planned and stagnant central commission.

To sanction the seriousness of the issue, even in the official documents, for the first time, appeared the necessity to change the strategy: from the old extensive methods to a new intensive phase. At the XXVI Congress of CPUS in February 1981, both Leonid Brezhnev and Nicolai Tikhonov described the passage to the intensive strategy as a transformation that for its dimension, weight and consequences, could have been linked only to the socialist industrialization that changed radically the country in 30s. However, the plan soon collided with the structure that the same leadership contributed to create: hostage of old schemes, of general laws of socialist development dictated and invented by Stalin, the dirigent group was soon unable to put into practice the plan. The monolithic system, the one society structure of the Soviet Union, was functional and able to operate only with an extensive model of economy. The Party, the indispensable engine to drive the reforms, was not ready for the task as it was itself stuck in the same old and immutable perpetual life.

After Brezhnev’s death, in November 1982, Yuri Andropov succeeded him as General Secretary of the Communist Party, the de facto head of government in the Soviet Union. Gorbachev was enthusiastic about the appointment, as it was one of his closest allies. Andropov was the first leader to collect the heavy inheritance of Brezhnev, and tried a first attempt to reform the Soviet machine.

 “It is impossible not to be aware that we are late in respect to the needs advanced by the actual material, technical, social and cultural development of the Soviet society.”

The above declaration appeared in the Kommunist in February 1983, and with it Andropov wanted to send a clear signal that time for change has come. Andropov was the first to advance a strong polemic against those egalitarian tendencies that undermined competency, against the salaries increases not linked to the productivity, against the line of those who disregarded analyzing the direct contribution made by each to the creation of the income.

“If we want to speak frankly, until now have not studied in the right way the society in which we live, and we have not completely discovered the laws that act inside, especially the economic ones”.

However, although Gorbachev hoped that Andropov would introduce not only economic reforms but also a political change, the latter carried out only personnel shifts rather than structural change. Despite this Gorbachev supported Andropov, he was his closest ally in the Politburo, and these reforms although not incisive enough were at least at starting point after years of empty policies. Andropov encouraged Gorbachev to chair Politburo meetings, to lead tasks and policies in areas other than agriculture, preparing him for future higher office.

When Andropov died, on 9 February 1984, it was clear that Gorbachev was his favorite candidate for the succession. However, many in the Central Committee thought that the 53-year old Gorbachev was too young and inexperienced to lead the country at that difficult time. The Politburo majority called to the party leadership Konstantin Chernenko, and old and experienced leader, seen as a continuation to the Brezhnev leadership style and favored by the conservatives. He was supported by another old member, Nicolai Tikhonov, showing that the conservatives were still strong and anxious about change. However, Chernenko was already seriously ill, and at 73 years old, he was the oldest ever leader of the party.  On 10 March 1985, Chernenko died, and once again the succession issue was at the forefront, delaying even further the necessary reforms. Gromyko proposed Gorbachev as the next General Secretary, and as a longstanding party member, Gromyko’s recommendation carried great weight among the Central Committee. At the time, Gorbachev had already several responsibilities that in the past were performed by different members of the party: supervisor of the agro-industrial complex, responsible for education, propaganda, science, party cadres administration, and economy (excluding heavy industry and constructions). However, he was not the only candidate as a coalition of conservative was still pushing instead for Viktor Grishin, another old guard politician. Gorbachev later said about that period of intense debate in the Party over the succession:

“We cannot forget the grave danger we faced in March 1985 and that, although not immediately, could have created another incontrollable change of power. When the problems that the country faced could have been tackled by democratization, or been sent again backwards by a hand of iron”.

Gorbachev expected opposition to his nomination as General Secretary, but ultimately the rest of the Politburo supported him and Gromyko’s side. Shortly after Chernenko’s death, the Politburo unanimously elected Gorbachev as his successor.

The Two Pillars: Perestroika and Glasnost

It is impossible to understand Gorbachev without analyzing those Soviet Union limits that together represented a powerful “brake mechanism” (as said at the Plenum in January 1987) that led the USSR to a full crisis. These limits were not only economic and social, but also due to history, to the political, psychological, cultural and organizational structure that resulted in the previous 60 years. Gorbachev tried to tackle these issues by launching two main policies: Perestroika and Glasnost.

Perestroika (restructure) was at first aimed at the economic sphere, but was soon accompanied by a general restructure of the juridical, political and social order. The core of Perestroika was an economy based on full accountancy, requiring all departments of the Soviet economy to keep account of their costs of production and income, and balance them to make a profit. Gorbachev in his own words explained:

“The present economic reform envisages that the emphasis will be shifted from primarily administrative to primarily economic management methods at every level, and calls for extensive democratization of management, and the overall activisation of the human factor. The reform is based on dramatically increased independence of enterprises and associations, their transition to full self-accounting and self-financing, and granting all appropriate rights to work collectives. They will now be fully responsible for efficient management and end results. A collective’s profits will be directly proportionate to its efficiency. The initial task of restructuring, an indispensable condition necessary if it is to be successful,  is to wake up those people who have fallen asleep and make them truly active and concerned, to ensure that everyone feels as if he is master of the country, of his enterprise, office, or institute. This is the main thing. To get the individual involved in all processes.”

Glasnost (openness) was to engage the mass of the population in the task of modernizing the Soviet economy by subjecting the bureaucracy to political criticism, with the hope that this would facilitate Perestroika. While Perestroika was the main pillar in the first phase of reforms, Glasnost only emerged, as powerful as the first, when Gorbachev realized that simple economic reforms could not be successful without reforming the rest of the Soviet structure. However, to do this, and to avoid those brake mechanisms, Glasnost was needed to bring to the surface criticism and constructive support to the reforms.

1985-1986 First Phase: Gorbachev’s Offensive

When Gorbachev assumed power, he was aware that reforms could no longer be postponed and explained the need for a new revolution, for radical transformations. However, this time, he was not a leader that from the top used the apparatus to obtain his way, and instead he tried to build alliances to support a social and political reformist project that was going to touch the vital structures of the Soviet Union.

His first act was to convene in Moscow, on 8 April 1985, a pan soviet conference of the industrial and agricultural cadres, factories and Sovkhoz directors, and presidents of Kolkhoz. He did not invite ministers or departments’ head of the Central Committee of the CPSU, in a clear message that this first step was intended solely for the workers and people administrating the economy first hand. At the conference, Gorbachev spoke about giving a large administrative autonomy to those in control of the economic activities, reducing the central control of the traditional economic planning. He accused centralism as an example of inertia and mismanagement:  

“The ministries, in their actual structure, have not any interest in economic experiments, they have a great experience in blocking everyone and interpreting the decisions of the Central Committee and Government in a way that, when they are applied, nothing of them remains”.

Gorbachev’s leadership style differed from that of his predecessors: he talked to civilians on the street, forbade the display of his portrait at the 1985 Red Square holiday celebrations, and encouraged frank and open discussions at Politburo meetings. He was aware that the Politburo could remove him from office, and that he could not pursue more radical reforms without a majority of supporters.

In his first year in office, the new Communist Party leader led therefore two campaigns. One has been the dismissal of hundreds of high-level officials, ranging from Brezhnev’s cronies in the Politburo to the party and state leaders of national, regional and local bodies. The other was to advocate productivity improvements through new technology in newly constructed factories, while overcoming the longstanding issues in the existing ones. Before the XXVII CPSU congress Gorbachev started to replace members in the apparatus with the aim to lower the average age and remove those opposed to reforms. In this way, several older members from the Politburo were encouraged to retire: Grigory Romanov, Nikolai Tikhonov, and Viktor Grishin the most notable. He promoted Gromyko to head of state, a largely ceremonial role with little influence, while his own ally, Eduard Shevardnadze, took Gromyko’s post in charge of foreign policy. Other allies brought to the forefront were Yakovlev, Lukyanov, and Medvedev, while Boris Yeltsin, was made Secretary of the Central Committee in July 1985. Gorbachev invited the members in the Politburo and the Party to “psychologically re-qualify”, meaning to be ready in embracing the change, the reforms in politics, society and economy. Those members opposed to the reforms were invited to stay aside and to avoid sabotaging the process. In this way, before the congress, were changed (due to decease, retirement or replacement):

CPSU Central Committee: 143 members out of 319

Head of Departments in CC: 8 out of 23

New Head of Government

2 Vice Presidents in the Council

4 Vice Presidents in 22 ministries.

Gorbachev was aware that this will lead to open opposition by those members accustomed to privileges and power, exactly as it happened to Khrushchev, and started to look at possible solutions. At the congress, he denounced the stagnation that led to 15 years of delays, of non decisions, that destroyed the life of the society and economy. His speech was a sort of attack to the previous leadership similar to the one that Khrushchev delivered 30 years before. The Five Year Plan of 1985–90 was targeted to expand industrial production, machine building, to boost agricultural productivity, and he merged five ministries and a state committee into a single entity, Agroprom, although by late 1986 he acknowledged this merger as a failure. The purpose of reform was to update and renovate the centrally planned economy, to slim its prerogatives and controls, not a transition to market socialism. In April 1986, he introduced an agrarian reform which linked salaries to output and allowed collective farms to sell 30% of their produce directly to shops or co-operatives rather than giving it all to the state for distribution. In a September 1986 speech, he embraced the idea of reintroducing market economics alongside limited private enterprise, citing Lenin’s New Economic Policy as a precedent, although he stressed to do not regard this as a return to capitalism. Gorbachev for the first time talked about the democratization of the Soviet society intended as a reform not to destroy socialism but to substantially change the institutions of the country. At first, dominant was the view that Perestroika was a sort of return to Lenin’s NEP, and therefore a continuous to the communist tradition. Gorbachev itself made references to the NEP, opening the road to the rehabilitation of Bukharin, and considering Stalin decision to abandon the NEP a crucial moment, a sort of steering from path. However, Gorbachev was aware that changing economic rules will inevitably change the social structure, and with it was inevitable to consider the effects on the political apparatus as well. Gorbachev explained that the Perestroika was based on 3 main reforms:

1. Socialist enterprises to receive autonomy and reduce central control.
2. Democracy and reform of institutions.
3. Party cadres “re-qualification”.

This was going to create opposition by those threatened by the reforms, who accused Gorbachev of destroying the socialist structure and the party role. Gorbachev invited the intelligentsia to express its views and to use the freedom of speech to defend the reforms against the opposition. The Party was to be under scrutiny, films, literary works, press, radio and TV discovered new life and expression. In the second year of his leadership, Gorbachev began speaking of Glasnost saw as a necessary measure to ensure Perestroika would not be sabotaged, and by inviting the Soviet population to speak up, to abandon the apathy and submission of the past in the hope that they would support his efforts. While the Soviet intelligentsia became a key Gorbachev supporter, others in the main population were still afraid or at least on a stand by position. They were promised reforms in the past and new very well how the leadership could block and return to authoritarianism in a blink of an eye. In addition, many were shocked and uncomfortable with the new freedoms, and the revelations about the country’s past secrets (the so called white stains) increased the fear of a possible political backlash. These views were not wrong, as while Glasnost boosted his domestic popularity, on the other alarmed many Communist Party hardliners, who were now ready to fight back, and others used the new opportunities to bring to the surface old and dangerous sentiments. In December 1985, the resistance, or effects, to the reforms materialized at Alma Ata, capital of Kazakhstan, where clashes erupted under nationalist views and anti Russian sentiments. This was due to the news that Kunaev, first secretary of the local party, was removed from office and replaced by a Russian, Kolbin. The revolt was orchestrated by the local party, supported by clientele and mafia style corrupt lobbies, in a sign that the danger for Gorbachev was not only at the centre but that the new free expression was bringing forward other undesired effects. Gorbachev believed that the democratization would free and bring forward the “new communists”, the reformists, bringing new ideas. Instead it brought on the surface careerists, antisocialist, ambitious and people who resented the system as a whole. He soon found himself between two factions:

• The Radicals: a heterogeneous group in which we found those who wanted further and speedy reforms, accepted market policies and were not afraid to see an end to Communist Party one state rule. At the same time, there were also new nationalist parties, born in each Soviet republic, soon demanding greater autonomy, and often driven by anti-Russian sentiments.
• The Conservatives: these were the men of the old apparatus that wanted to safeguard and protect the old privileges and power. They saw Perestroika as a deviation to capitalism and anarchy, a decline for Soviet role abroad.

The radicals in particular were pushing for further reforms, which can be summarized as follow:

• Refusal to identify socialism with state control.
• Abandon the monolithic society.
• Refusal to consider the party as the depositary of truth and power.
• Free speech and expression, right to create aggregations and to contribute to the decision process.
• Recognition of individual properties, as well as collective, and also between socialism and market.
• Autonomy of the social classes and forces in respect to the state, especially in reference to the right of association, strike, etc.

In April 1986, the Chernobyl disaster occurred and it brought to the surface the ensuing battle inside the party. In the immediate aftermath, officials fed Gorbachev incorrect information to downplay the incident. Several days after it occurred, Gorbachev gave a televised report to the nation, in which admitted that the disaster was evidence of a widespread problem in Soviet society, such as poor maintenance and materials, as well as a workplace submission to power. Gorbachev later described the incident as one which made him appreciate the scale of incompetence and cover-ups in the Soviet Union, and became increasingly open in his criticism of the system, including food production, state bureaucracy, the military, and the foreign policy. The latter was seen as unaffordable, dictated by past greed and power, by the Cold War that now needed to be addressed and reassessed. Perestroika policies led in this way to retire from Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, Austral Africa, South East Asia, and even in Eastern Europe the signal was a lesser pressure on the fraternal parties. Military operations were scaled down and troops recalled back to the Soviet Union.

1987–1989 Second Phase: Further Reforms and Opposition Build Up

In January 1987, Gorbachev attended a Central Committee plenum where he went a step further talking about Perestroika and democratization, while criticizing widespread corruption. By 1987, Glasnost had spread through Soviet society: journalists were writing openly, many economic problems were being publicly revealed, and studies critically reassessed Soviet history. Gorbachev, however, by now was aware that were also appearing some effect which required attention, and insisted that people should use the freedom responsibly, that journalists and writers should be completely objective in their reporting. Parallel to the growth and speed of the reforms, also the opposition and its voice increased. In March 1988, the magazine Sovetskaya Rossija published a letter were it criticized elements of Gorbachev’s reforms, regarded as a denigration of the Stalinist era and arguing that a reformer clique was to blame. Over 900 Soviet newspapers reprinted the article, with anti-reformists openly supporting the letter, while reformers panicked fearing a backlash against Perestroika. On returning from Yugoslavia, Gorbachev called a Politburo meeting, at which he confronted those hardliners supporting the accusations. The Politburo arrived at a unanimous decision to express disapproval of the letter and published in Pravda a counterattack where Yakovlev and Gorbachev accused as unpatriotic those who look everywhere for internal enemies, and that Stalin’s repressions and lawlessness were unforgiveable crimes. Although the next party congress was not scheduled until 1991, Gorbachev decided to anticipate the 19^th Party Conference in June 1988, in a move intended to strengthen momentum and address the issues before it was too late. Gorbachev wanted to reform the Soviets, changing them from powerless and obedient bodies of the Politburo into active legislatures. At the Congress he also advanced the proposal to form a new institution, the Congress of People’s Deputies, whose members were to be elected in a free vote. This congress would in turn elect a Supreme Soviet, which would be the higher legislator. The conference confirmed the direction of the changes and evaluated their progress. For four days, with unprecedented openness, 5,000 delegates debated, endorsed proposals aimed at democratizing Soviet society. Soviet television broadcasted much of the conference proceedings. If fully implemented, the reforms would have shifted power from the party to more national and local government bodies, making the party’s role more ideological. The conference endorsed Gorbachev proposals:

1. Strengthen the elected legislatures of the people.
2. Reduce direct party involvement in government.
3. Limit the terms of party and government leaders.
4. Create a presidency role that will have the mandate of the people.

At the closing session, Gorbachev stated:

“The goal is to proceed for the interests of the people and to assert the humanistic values of socialism. The purpose of Perestroika is to create a new, humane image of socialism.”

Major obstacles: nationalities question and the Eastern Bloc

These further steps increased even more the opposition from the conservatives, as well as renewed pushes from the radicals to speed up the reforms. The bureaucracy, which controlled the highly centralized political and economic power of the country, was still resistant to reform. Many in the society were also afraid of change and its uncertainties; Gorbachev’s promise of improvement in the standard of living was still just a promise, his reforms brought few economic benefits by 1989. Gorbachev also faced long suppressed problems in the form of serious ethnic conflicts in the Soviet republics. Armenia and Azerbaijan, two neighboring republics, were in a bitter territorial dispute over control of Nagorno-Karabakh, a region within Azerbaijan. The largely Armenian population wanted to return to Armenia, while demonstrations, general strikes, and armed violence were escalating the conflict. Gorbachev promised greater autonomy for Nagorno-Karabakh but refused the transfer, fearing that it would set a dangerous precedent, and stir similar ethnic tensions throughout the Soviet Union. Following clashes between Azerbaijani and Armenian gangs, local troops tried to quell the unrest but were attacked by mobs. The Politburo ordered additional troops, but in contrast to those who wanted a massive crackdown, Gorbachev urged restraint. He believed that the situation could be resolved through a political solution, urging talks between the Armenian and Azerbaijani Communist Parties.

Problems also emerged in the Georgian Republic in April 1989, where nationalists demanded independence and clashed with troops in Tbilisi, resulting in various deaths. Protests against Moscow also surfaced in the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which the Soviet Union took over in 1940. In this case also there were calls for independence, while the Supreme Soviets of the three republics declared their economic autonomy from Russia and introduced measures to restrict immigration. In August 1989, the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet ruled the 1940 Soviet annexation of their country to be illegal.

While the internal scenario was becoming incontrollable, in the Warsaw Pact bloc, situation also started to change. Gorbachev rejected the Brezhnev Doctrine, the idea that the Soviet Union had the right to intervene militarily in other Marxist–Leninist countries if their governments were threatened. In December 1987 he announced the withdrawal of 500,000 Soviet troops from Central and Eastern Europe. He did not publicly support reformers elsewhere in the Eastern Bloc, but behind the scene encouraged the communist parties to talk about reforms. Some Eastern Bloc leaders, like Hungary’s János Kádár and Poland’s Wojciech Jaruzelski, were sympathetic to reform, others, like Romania’s Nicolae Ceaușescu and East Germany’s Eric Honecker, were hostile to it.

1989-1991 Presidential Reform and Collapse

In March and April 1989, elections to the new Congress were held. Of the 2,250 legislators to be elected, one hundred were directly chosen by the Communist Party, with Gorbachev ensuring many were reformists. Gorbachev became chairmen of the Congress, the new de facto head of state, with 2,123 votes in favor to 87 against. Its sessions were televised, and its members elected the new Supreme Soviet.

In February 1990, both radicals and Marxist–Leninist hardliners intensified their attacks on Gorbachev. He was aware that the Central Committee could still oust him as General Secretary, therefore, decided to change the role of head of government into a presidency from which they could not remove him. The new president office was elected by the Deputies Congress, which was in turn controlled by reformists. In March, the Congress of People’s Deputies held the first (and only) Soviet presidential election, in which Gorbachev was the only candidate. He secured 1,329 in favor to 495 against, while 313 votes were invalid or absent. He therefore became the first executive President of the Soviet Union, while a new 18-member Presidential Council de facto replaced the Politburo.

“The Perestroika policy, under my view, it’s the only possible for a country like ours, it represent the road to a pacific passage to a new condition, from the authoritarian and bureaucratic system to a socialist human and democratic society”.

This was the first official statement of Gorbachev as President of the Soviet Union after the election.

At the same Congress meeting, he presented the idea of repealing Article 6 of the Soviet constitution, which had ratified the Communist Party as the ruling party of the Soviet Union. The Congress passed the reform, undermining the de jure nature of the one-party state. However, to please the conservatives, and reassure that the Soviet Union was not on course of becoming a fully fledged multiparty system, Gorbachev on 15 May 1990 declared on Sovetskaya Rossija:

“The CPSU Central Committee and I are convinced supporters of a party characterized as a social vanguard. I believe that, although changing and reforming, the party should not abandon any of the spheres in which today is active, and stay instead on the side of the people, especially in this crucial phase of the Perestroika.

CPSU must learn how to use all the techniques of the parliamentary struggle, must be capable to conduct a electoral campaign, of creating blocs uniting with other parties, of defending its positions and more. Looking at the democratic centralism it is a matter of hitting what is the bureaucratism in the Party itself. However, we are against the creation of factions with their own internal structure and discipline.”

Gorbachev tried to reassure the hardliners that by removing the one party clause and structure, the CPSU was still to be seen as a guarantor of socialist path, a vanguard role that would have still assured to the Party considerably influence on the political scenario although under a sort of moderator role. However, the reform was inevitably to be seen for what it was: a path towards the end of monolithism. This meant for the radicals the occasion to oust the communists and move decisively towards a multi-party system, while for the conservatives was a clear attempt t restore parliamentarism and a one way road to market and capitalism.The example of this came in the 1990 elections for the Russian Supreme Soviet, the Communist Party faced challengers from an alliance of liberalisers known as Democratic Russia. Yeltsin was elected as president of Russian Republic parliament and that year opinion polls showed him overtaking Gorbachev as the most popular politician in the Soviet Union. The Russian Supreme Soviet was out of Gorbachev’s control, the radicals used this in June 1990 to declare that in the Russian Republic laws took precedence over those of the Soviet central government. Amid a growth in Russian nationalist sentiment, Gorbachev had reluctantly allowed the formation of a Communist Party of the Russian Republic as a branch of the larger Soviet Communist Party. Gorbachev attended its first congress in June, but soon found it dominated by hardliners who opposed his reformist stance.

At the 28^th Communist Party Congress in July 1990, hardliners criticized the reformists but Gorbachev was re-elected party leader with the support of three-quarters of delegates. He was now in a delicate situation:

1. Yeltsin faction was in full control of the major republic and pushing for a complete autonomous policy, supported by other nationalist leaders across the Soviet Union. All opposed the control of the CPUS and the President of the Soviet Union.
2. The conservatives were in control on the Russian Communist Party and still held power and influence in the security apparatus.
3. The CPUS was mainly reformist and pro Gorbachev but having lost its prerogative as supreme power, it was unable to control the process in motion.

Seeking compromise with the radicals, Gorbachev assembled a team of both his and Yeltsin’s advisers to come up with an economic reform package called 500 Days programme. This called for further decentralization and some privatization in the economic sector, with Gorbachev describing the plan as a “modern socialism” rather than a return to capitalism. However, he also started to have doubts when realized that the plan was backed by the Russian Supreme Soviet as a possible Trojan horse to ultimately end his presidency and with it the Soviet Union. Many in the Communist Party and state apparatus, not only hardliners but also moderate reformists, warned against it arguing that it would create marketplace chaos, rampant inflation, and unprecedented levels of unemployment. When Gorbachev decided to abandon the 500 Days plan, Yeltsin rallied against Gorbachev in an October speech, claiming that Russia would no longer accept a subordinate position to the Soviet government.

A full clash now emerged in front of the public between the two leaders. By mid-November 1990, much of the press was calling for Gorbachev to resign and predicting civil war, while hardliners were urging Gorbachev to disband the presidential council and arrest vocal liberals in the media. In November, he addressed the Supreme Soviet where he announced an eight-point program, which included governmental reforms, among them the abolition of the presidential council. By this point, Gorbachev was isolated from many of his former allies and aides, Yakovlev had moved out of his inner circle and Shevardnadze had resigned. His support among the intelligentsia was declining, and by the end of 1990 his approval ratings had plummeted.

Gorbachev was now seen as a leader trying to desperately keep the Soviet Union alive by slowing reforms and appeasing the conservatives, while Yeltsin was for many the liberator the true reformer on a road similar to that embarked by the eastern Europeans in 1989.

Amid growing dissent in the Baltic, especially Lithuania, in January 1991 Gorbachev demanded that the Lithuanian Supreme Council rescind its pro-independence reforms. Soviet troops occupied several Vilnius buildings and clashed with protesters, 15 of whom were killed. Gorbachev was widely blamed by the radicals, with Yeltsin calling for his resignation. Gorbachev denied sanctioning the military operation, although some in the military claimed that he had; the truth of the matter was never clearly established. Fearing more civil disturbances, that month Gorbachev banned demonstrations and ordered troops to patrol Soviet cities alongside the police. This further alienated the radicals but was not enough to win-over the hardliners that wanted a full crackdown. Wanting to preserve the Union, in April Gorbachev and the leaders of nine Soviet republics jointly agreed to prepare a treaty that would renew the federation under a new constitution, but six of the republics (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Georgia, and Armenia) did not endorse it. Although a referendum on the issue received 76.4% in favor of a continued federation, the six rebellious republics had not taken part seriously undermining the survival the Soviet Union and opening the door to disintegration. Nevertheless, negotiations for the new constitution were agreed, bringing together Gorbachev and Yeltsin in discussions, and it was planned to be formally signed in August.

Spring and summer passed on a relatively calm atmosphere, and while Gorbachev and radicals were apparently finding common ground to work, the hardliners decided that the time for the experiment was over and decided to pass on the offensive.

In August, while Gorbachev and his family were on holiday at their dacha in Crimea, a group of senior Communist Party figures calling themselves the State Committee on the State of Emergency launched a coup d’état to seize control of the Soviet Union. The Perestroika reached the end and further events led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union on 31 December 1991.

Conclusions

Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, intense debate emerged on the Perestroika and Gorbachev. It is widely recognized that if the Perestroika would have continued, the Soviet Union would have transformed in a very different country, less authoritarian but not democratic in the western sense of the term. The likely scenario would have resembled more to the actual Russian system developed by Vladimir Putin, while on the economic sphere, is likely that the Soviet Union would have migrated into a market economy similar to China or the contemporary Russia. However, it is difficult to confirm whether this system would have maintained some socialist features as suggested by the same Gorbachev when launching Perestroika.  Gorbachev wanted to improve the Marxist-Leninist system, transforming it and adapting it to the new challenges of the modern era. He defended socialism and its achievements, but was critic on the actual form assumed by the state apparatus and the control over economy. The paradox is that Gorbachev wanted to improve the existing Marxist–Leninist system but ultimately ended up destroying it.

This destruction has been subject of the debate over the decades and although clear answers cannot be provided, there are some unanimous conclusions. Gorbachev, as a believer in socialism and reforms, was convinced that the Soviet Union could be saved, but this collided with the reality of the events and ultimately accelerated its dissolution. Beneath the surface, the different republics saw in the decentralization not a democratic experiment, but the way out of Russian control and to assert their own agenda. Politicians that were left outside the party favors, got onboard the reform boat to sink it and obtain the power otherwise denied. When the Glasnost was launched, it soon became a boomerang for Gorbachev, bringing forward critics and condemnation of the system but with one main outcome: the acceleration towards a total change instead of the reform within the system.

Was Gorbachev therefore a naïve politician who never considered the consequences, or dreamed of a utopian reform? Gorbachev grew in the party apparatus, frequented the powerful KGB chief Andropov and saw the passage from Stalin, to Khrushchev and then Brezhnev, therefore he knew perfectly well the state machine and its working. Gorbachev truly believed that reforms could succeed and maybe his shortfall was in the weakness shown when dealing with the oppositions on the right and on the left. Gorbachev wanted to start reforms from the bottom instead of the top, he wrongly assumed that the Soviet society was already matured enough to handle such responsibility, but in doing so he awakened those forces that were actually contrary to the design: nationalists, secessionists, opportunists and the conservatives. The last ones were strong enough as long as Gorbachev failed to appease them at the right moment and repress them at another. He appeared often in the middle of the struggle between reformists and conservatives, making always the wrong move at the wrong time. To some politicians, Gorbachev’s plan could have worked in a country already on the path to transformation, with at least an embryonic structure and understanding of the new way forward, past the authoritarian Marxist-Leninist structure, but the 1980s Soviet Union was far away from that stage, it was still a Brezhnevian colossus with a crippling economy and a political system unchanged for 30 years. In those conditions, only a leader able to have total control, and authoritarian enough to bestow the path, could have succeded. The examples are again Vladimir Putin, who acting as a plenipotentiary used power ruthlessly to achieve the design, or the same China where the party delivered the change maintaining its control over the political system.

Gorbachev error may have been to be truly democratic in a time where he should have instead acted as a reformed czar, or an illuminated dictator.

Due to his role, opinions on Gorbachev are deeply divided. Most Russians citizens have a negative opinion, showing that in Russia many would have preferred a controlled and gradual evolution rather than total fallout, even if to achieve more freedom. This is totally in contrast with the west, where Gorbachev is seen as one of the more influential politicians of the 20^th century, and a political visionary that brought freedom to East Europe.

In Gorbachev defense it must be said that he probably arrived too late and was misunderstood by many in the party, and that along Khrushchev he was the only Soviet leader that truly attempted a reform in the interest of the society as a whole. He was not a traitor, nor a stooge of capitalism, he strongly believed in the power of reforms to give the Soviet Union a makeover to develop socialism for the 21^st century. He started reforms with a design in mind but without a clear understanding of the final outcome, awakening forces that he underestimated or simply could not control. Gorbachev was the last Soviet leader who actually fought for the Union preservation but he could never imagine that his own reforms would be the opening of the Pandora’s Box, leading to the destruction of the country he loved.