ABSTRACT
Mikhail Gorbachev's politics are a tough act to follow. When Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in March 1985, he appeared to believe that the problems he faced were essentially economic. By the beginning of 1987 Gorbachev had concluded that the real crisis facing him was not only economic but political. This chapter describes the causes and consequences of the political crisis. It describes how Gorbachev's political strategy appears designed to respond to it. The chapter examines the consistency of the strategy and its appropriateness as it has evolved so far. The traditional Soviet system operated with a surprisingly narrow array of political instruments, of which the most important was the control of personnel, particularly within the Party organization. This was possible because the leadership confined itself to a narrow range of goals—essentially internal security, industrial growth, and military power—and concentrated its power on those.
