Khrushchev’s rule that no party official could serve
more than fifteen years and that one-third of the
members on all committees had to change every
five years. This meant that the majority of the
long-serving party officials of the Brezhnev era
would remain in place, but their privileges were
reduced over the next three years, they became
more accountable above and below, and corrupt
practices became more dangerous. Millions of
party workers thus felt nothing for Gorbachev’s
reforms but resentment and had little personal
interest in lifting a finger to further them.
In April 1986, soon after the Twenty-Seventh
Congress, disaster struck the Soviet Union: an
explosion took place within the nuclear reactor at
Chernobyl. The Ukraine was severely affected by
radiation: hundreds were killed, the health of
thousands more was affected for years to come,
and the rich farming land was severely polluted.
Moreover, the damage was a major setback for
the Soviet economy. Where was glasnostthen, as
Gorbachev and the Kremlin hesitated for days
before revealing the truth about the nuclear fall-
out spreading through Scandinavia to Western
Europe? The successor republics of the Soviet
Union have many nuclear reactors built to the
same design which they cannot do without. They
remain potential time-bombs.
Yet Gorbachev showed himself to be a very dif-
ferent leader from his predecessors. There was a
new openness and humanity, and an air of excite-
ment about changes to come, but little was actu-
ally achieved in 1985 and 1986 to improve the life
of the average Soviet citizen. The Gorbachev
media image promised much but there was a dan-
ger that expectations would soon outrun perfor-
mance. Even so, there were real signs of change.
Glasnostwas ending the persecution of human-
rights activists, most notably of Sakharov, released
from his Siberian exile in December 1986. A new
foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, was
appointed in July 1985, when the old Cold War
warrior Andrei Gromyko was replaced and kicked
upstairs into a ceremonial presidency. In October
1986 the general secretary met Reagan at the
Reykjavik summit and proposed complete nuclear
disarmament; this breathtaking suggestion came
to nothing because Reagan would not accept
Gorbachev’s condition of confining the US ‘Star
Wars’ Strategic Defence Initiative to the labora-
tory. Yet it proved not the end of detente but the
beginning.
As Gorbachev was breaking new ground at
home and abroad, he also faced fierce resistance
from two, opposed, sides. Yegor Ligachev, the
powerful second secretary of the party, voiced
misgivings about the direction of reform. For Boris
Yeltsin, Moscow’s active party chief and a member
of the Politburo, Gorbachev’s economic and polit-
ical reforms were far too hesitant. Yeltsin (a former
Ligachev protégé before being taken up by
Gorbachev) and Ligachev clashed bitterly in the
Politburo. Ligachev was determined to destroy the
political influence of the now radical Moscow
leader, who had been denouncing party privileges,
corruption and even what he called the new
personality cult of the general secretary. In the
Central Committee Yeltsin forced a showdown,
announcing at its meeting in October 1987 his
intention to resign from the Politburo. Gorbachev
was furious. The outward appearance of unity of
the Central Committee had been broken on the
eve of the annual November celebration of the
Russian Revolution. Yeltsin, a sick man at the time,
probably suffering from heart trouble, was obliged
to go into hospital. The streak of ruthlessness in
Gorbachev is revealed by what happened next.
Yeltsin was forced to leave hospital to attend a
meeting of the Moscow party committee; he was
humiliated and sacked. It was Ligachev’s revenge
and triumph. But Yeltsin’s disgrace also marks the
beginning of the bitter rivalry, personal and polit-
ical, that set Yeltsin against Gorbachev. For the
time being Yeltsin was cast into the political
wilderness. His re-emergence was to change the
course of Soviet history.
In 1987 Gorbachev felt secure enough to
begin to push through startling political and
structural changes to the party and the state. In
January, he proposed to the Central Committee
that deputies should not simply be appointed to
local regional and republican soviets by the party
apparat– the people should participate and
should be allowed a genuine choice of candidates.
What was more, the deputies need not be party
hacks but could be professionals, and they should