In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev becomes the new leader of the Soviet Union.
He truly represents a model product of the Soviet communist system.
Born in the Caucasus,
his family had experienced some of the terrors of Stalinism.
But he's risen through the ranks, the best Party schools,
all the good experience in government.
The other leaders would look at him
as a youthful, dynamic person, thoroughly imbued
with all the training the Soviet socialist system can provide to its young leaders.
Gorbachev looks around and analyzes the communist movement as of the 1980s.
He's quite taken
with some of the ideas of the Eurocommunist
parties in places like Spain, and especially in Italy.
Taken with the way they're trying to bring
back ideas of democratic socialism in the redefinition
of communism. He adopts, after he comes in,
the goal of perestroika: renewal for the Soviet Union.
He wants to reduce foreign requirements. In other words, let's ease up
on confrontations with the West so that I can cut back on the amount of resources
I have to devote to my military establishment
and can put more into my domestic economy.
He also believes in glasnost: a new openness, a
more open dialogue about the problems of the country,
the past of the country, and options for the future.
Why, you might ask, did the Soviet
leadership choose someone like this to lead
the country in 1985? Well, a couple points.
One, it was a very close call in 1985.
There was no inevitability about the
selection of Gorbachev from among the field.
His principal rival, the party boss of Leningrad, might've been
selected and the Soviet Union might've followed a very different path.
But Gorbachev was the man they picked. After the previous three leaders,
that image of youthful
dynamism and his reputed successes with Soviet agriculture
seemed to make him look like the best guy.
But a really important explanation for why
Gorbachev adopts this agenda and has support
for a while, is that he's embodying
multiple agendas of people within the communist elite.
On the one hand, he does embody the agenda
of people who really do want to liberalize the definition
of communism. People like this man,
Alexander Yakolev, a long time Communist Party official that
had spent a lot of time serving in foreign countries.
He'd thought a lot about how to renew the Soviet system.