7 Mikhail Gorbachev 7joined the Komsomol (Young Communist League) in 1946
and drove a combine harvester at a state farm in Stavropol
for the next four years. He proved a promising Komsomol
member, and in 1952 he entered the law school of Moscow
State University and became a member of the Communist
Party. He graduated with a degree in law in 1955 and went
on to hold a number of posts in the Komsomol and regular
party organizations in Stavropol, rising to become first
secretary of the regional party committee in 1970.
Gorbachev was named a member of the Central
Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
in 1971, and he was appointed a party secretary of agricul-
ture in 1978. He became a candidate member of the
Politburo in 1979 and a full member in 1980. Following the
death of Konstantin Chernenko in March 1985, Gorbachev
succeeded him as general secretary of the CPSU.
Gorbachev quickly set about consolidating his per-
sonal power in the Soviet leadership. His primary domestic
goal was to resuscitate the stagnant Soviet economy. To
this end, he called for rapid technological modernization
and increased worker productivity, and he tried to make
the cumbersome Soviet bureaucracy more efficient and
responsive.
When these superficial changes failed to yield tangible
results, Gorbachev in 1987–88 proceeded to initiate deeper
reforms of the Soviet economic and political system.
Under his new policy of glasnost (“openness”), a major
cultural thaw took place, as freedoms of expression
and of information were significantly expanded. Under
Gorbachev’s policy of perestroika (“restructuring”), the first
modest attempts to democratize the Soviet political sys-
tem were undertaken. Multicandidate contests and the
secret ballot were introduced in some elections to party
and government posts. Under perestroika, some limited