last Brezhnev era Congress in 1981 (Mawdsley and White, 2000:
198). However, Gorbachev did face one notable limitation, which
was to cause him great harm in the last year of his active political
career, namely that his ‘own network of trusted associates was, in
comparative terms, small and weak’ (Miller, 1987: 82).
One extremely significant event was the appointment of a new
Foreign Minister. The death of Chernenko, as well as vacating the
position of General Secretary of the Communist Party, also created
a vacancy in the position of the USSR’s nominal Head of State,
that is, the Chairmanship of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet.
Rather than take it for himself (as his three predecessors had
done), Gorbachev used it as a pretext to replace the 76-year old
Gromyko as Foreign Minister by moving him into an essentially
honorific position. His replacement was completely unexpected:
Eduard Shevardnadze, the First Secretary of the Georgian party
organisation. Born in 1928, Shevardnadze had caught the attention
of some in the leadership when, as head of the Georgian KGB, he
had moved against the corrupt party First Secretary, Vasilii
Mzhavanadze. He had known Gorbachev for many years, and by
his own account had heterodox views on Afghanistan: in his mem-
oirs he stated that in December 1979, he and Gorbachev ‘learned
from the newspapers that Soviet troops had invaded Afghanistan
and hastened to meet to discuss it. We agreed that it was a fatal
error that would cost the country dearly’ (Shevardnadze, 1991: 26).
Gorbachev’s consolidation of power: policy consequences
Gorbachev’s selection as General Secretary of the Soviet
Communist Party was an event of cataclysmic significance for a
range of political forces within the Soviet Union and the wider
world (see Hosking, 1990; Miller, 1993; Brown, 1996; Hough,
1997; Galeotti, 1997). It rapidly became clear that change was in
the air. While Gorbachev’s ‘bleeding wound’ comment at the 1986
Party Congress attracted some attention as a symptom of a new
mood, it had less dramatic effect than the propagation of a policy
of glasnost’ (‘candour’) which began to acquire real bite after the
The Najibullah-Gorbachev Period 1986–1989 115