Gorbachev the Rerformer: Glasnost’ and Perestroika

Abstract

At the XXVII Party Congress, in February and March 1986, Gorbachev declared that what the country and the CPSU needed was nothing short of ‘radical reform’. This might have sounded like so much rhetoric, but in many ways this Congress represented another milestone in Gorbachev’s personal political growth. From the public politics of the podium and in the intense behind-the-scenes preparation and negotiations which took place, a new willingness to liberalize the USSR began to emerge. Uskoreniye, the politics of simple economic modernization, gave way to the much more broadly based processes of comprehensive perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost’ (openness).