ABSTRACT
Pervasive corruption undermined the legitimacy of Communist Party leadership. Zdenek Mlynar was a young, idealistic, Czech Communist studying law with Mikhail Gorbachev at Moscow State at that time. For Gorbachev, as for many of his generation who came of age and entered public life, Nikita Khrushchev’s speech and the project of reform communism it launched became the guiding vision of his life. The overthrow of Khrushchev and the termination of reform communism presented the young reformers of Gorbachev’s generation with a real setback. Yuri Andropov, the head of the KGB, was elected to fill Leonid Brezhnev’s position as general secretary of the Communist Party. In Czechoslovakia public indignation at police outrages against student demonstrators brought down the Communist government of Gustav Husak. In supporting independence for the Baltic republics and demanding popular election of the Soviet president, the Interregional Group made it clear that its primary loyalty was to democracy rather than to communism.
