ABSTRACT
The closed nature of political decisionmaking created enormous problems for researchers in the Soviet period, but the collapse of the old order has led to problems in the definition and analysis of leadership of a novel kind. In periods of rapid political change, there may be a shifting set of political actors and institutions. The respondents were selected evenly from people who had knowledge and experience of the Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin periods of leadership. One of the mysteries about the collapse of the Soviet Union has been which institutions contributed the policies that undid the country and led to the disbanding of the Communist Party. The set of questions on institutions sought to cast some light on the problem. The people influencing Gorbachev were drawn from within the established political elites, overwhelmingly from the Communist Party leadership followed by government leaders and top elected leaders.
