ABSTRACT
The Soviet conception of Communism had become much more of a hindrance than a help to the Soviet leadership and was in need of a major overhaul. The Soviet leadership’s heightened concern over ideology was evident at a major six-day ideology conference in April 1981 that was addressed by an unusually large contingent from the Politburo. In order to pave the way for his reforms, General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev has destroyed many of the fundamental ideological underpinnings of the system that had been used to justify one-party rule and rigidly centralized control over all aspects of society. The process of ideological revision has been largely negative, weakening ideological constraints and broadening the definition of socialism to allow room for the kinds of practical measures the leadership wants to carry out to revitalize the system. The process of ideological revision received another push in June 1983 at the first Central Committee plenum dealing with ideology since the days of Nikita Khrushchev.
