THE MOSCOW REFORM TEAM 1371 December 1985 at a conference of party members in the ministry he
issued a startling injunction: nobody was to think it acceptable any
longer to steal or lie. Ritual references to Lenin were to cease. Indeed
there should not even be eulogies of Gorbachëv, and Gromyko was to
be treated as ‘a monument’, as history, as one of the set of problems
that the Soviet leadership sought to solve.^79
Gorbachëv and Shevardnadze, abetted by Yakovlev, were ready for
the struggle. They had lived their adult years under the integument of
an unimaginative gerontocracy. They resolved to turn the USSR upside
down. In their favour was the recognition in the Politburo that things
had to change if the USSR was going to deal with the challenges it
faced. Gorbachëv was not to everybody’s liking in the leadership, but
once he became General Secretary he could take the opportunity to
get rid of his outright opponents. He was showing a capacity to bring
people along with him who did not share all his preferences for
reform. His team of fellow radicals united around him. The way was
clearing for a transformation of internal and external policy in
Moscow.