ABSTRACT
According to the 1977 Constitution, the party was the "leading and guiding force in society, the nucleus of the Soviet political system". The party was the chief policymaking body in the country, and armed with Marxist-Leninist ideology, it assumed responsibility for leading the country to communism. Under the general supervision of the Politburo and the secretariat, and the immediate direction of a senior secretary, the Central Committee's Department of Organizational Party Work selected and placed personnel in all the top positions in Soviet society. The Communist Party also supervised the ministries from within through its primary party organizations (PPOs), which were the Communist cells located inside all major state and social organizations in the USSR. Regarding party control of the state's military, security, and police institutions, Gorbachev was especially reluctant to decouple fully the party and state. At the 28th Congress he came out strongly against the depoliticization of these bodies.
