ABSTRACT
The first phase of the perestroika period, 1985-1988, saw the first cracks in the regime's political unity and the partocratic state's institutional cohesion. Party-state institutions constrained and delayed reforms as well as their ability to successfully address the macrostructural crisis that spawned them. Gorbachev's inclination to reform the entire political system was crystallized into determination by the partocracy's concerted resistance to his early reforms in 1985-1987. This was reflected in the wake of the infamous Nina Andreeva letter's publication, the most overt attempt to date to stop perestroika in its tracks and weaken its leader, since it was then that Gorbachev threw down the gauntlet before the Politburo. The Gorbachev leadership's attempt to liberalize and democratize state-society relations induced ideological rifts inside the regime. They developed into the organization and institutionalization of the main political groupings expressing the structural crisis and ultimately leading to multiple sovereignty.
