ABSTRACT
At the beginning of November, when the world's attention was focused on the summit meeting between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, internal developments in the USSR showed that Gorbachev was unrelentingly following the patterns established during the previous months of his tenure. In January 1986 the accountability-election campaign preceding the 27th communist party of the soviet union Congress entered its decisive stage. Semantic fodder and rhetorical fireworks were produced without a single expression of political realism coming from the congress rostrum. Possibly Gorbachev did not want to say too much at this stage of the congress, preferring to obtain his voice of confidence and then proceed to implement discrete, but genuine, "radical reforms." The new Central Committee elected at the congress did not drop any of the old Politburo's full members. The extensive changes in the compositions of the Secretariat and the Central Committee, notwithstanding the moderate adjustments within the Politburo, justified the expectations expressed prior to the congress.
