ABSTRACT
Bureaucracy is automatically associated with the opposition to Mikhail Gorbachev and his reforms. Members of the state apparatus, the party nomenklatura, and conservatives of all kinds and ideological persuasions are lumped together under the term bureaucracy; they are invariably represented as a burden, which has occasionally developed into a threat against perestroika and Gorbachev himself. Bureaucracy has always been an integral and indispensable part of the Russian system. The analysis of the Soviet bureaucracy's opposition to Gorbachev's reforms will include a classification of that particular group of opponents, an examination of their motives and specific actions, and a description of Gorbachev's main steps to combat their resistance to perestroika. The members of the bureaucratic-conservative opposition have never published an authoritative document regarding the motives for their opposition to Gorbachev and his reforms. The conservatives were served a very important warning—namely, that their positions could be threatened not only from the top by Gorbachev but from the bottom by the people.
