ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the interaction of institutional change and constraints with the dynamics of regime split politics and the emerging moderates' dilemma at the watershed XXVIII Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) Congress. The Democratic Platform's (DP) threat to walk out of the CPSU, new party-state institutional arrangements, and newly elected leaderships, most importantly in Russia, combined to pose the specter of a war for control over state organization in conditions of dual sovereignty and a revolutionary situation. The DP's threat to quit the CPSU threatened to consolidate the establishment of dual sovereignty. This greatly complicated the evolution of perestroika into a nascent imposed transition, since outside the party arena, power of party liberals in the DP was potentially much greater than inside the party where hardliners controlled the apparat and softliners controlled the general secretaryship. The only compromise around the congress would be struck by moderates outside the CPSU framework.
