ABSTRACT
In March 1985, Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev was elevated to the post of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and thus also to the leadership of one of the world’s two superpowers. At the age of 54, he was then not only the youngest voting member of the Politburo, he was also the youngest to lead the Party since Stalin’s take-over in the late 1920s. The impression of change and vitality that Gorbachev carried with him into the Kremlin stood in stark contrast to the combined images of his immediate predecessors and he certainly wasted no time impressing upon his audience that a new era had begun. In several major speeches during the following couple of months, he committed himself firmly to a programme of revitalization and reform.
