ABSTRACT
Mikhail Gorbachev showed the memorandum to no one. He was a successful politician, not a revolutionary. In April 1985 the Gorbachev team gathered at the Volinskoye dacha to prepare his first report as general secretary to the Central Committee. Then, in 1983, Gorbachev came on an official visit, as a Politburo member. According to Anatoli Chernayev, Gorbachev began to understand that his idea of turning the party into the leader of perestroika simply wasn’t working. Gorbachev and his advisers saw the party stepping back from its day-to-day control of all decisions and allowing the Congress a free hand to debate and pass laws and the government leeway to execute them. Gorbachev developed the themes of “socialist pluralism” and a “law-based state.” On 28 June 1988, Gorbachev opened the 19th Party conference with a marathon four-hour speech. The five thousand delegates found the contents distinctly unsettling.
