ABSTRACT
A regular plenum of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Central Committee took place on 21 October 1987. The TASS announcement concerning its agenda revealed nothing unusual. The plenum was to discuss "matters connected with the carrying out of celebration activities on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, and some current tasks of the reorganization process." Within hours of the plenum, rumors started circulating in Moscow that Boris Yeltsin had made a highly emotional and unscheduled speech at the plenum, in which he had attacked the slow pace of restructuring, accused Yegor Kuzmich Ligachev and other officials of blocking Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms, rebuked the members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Central Committee for refusing to give up their special privileges, criticized Gorbachev's style of leadership, and even questioned the role of Gorbachev's wife Raisa.
