ABSTRACT
During the years 1985 to 1990 a third generation of relatively young leaders came to power. These leaders may be distinguished from their predecessors by the fact that they had not experienced World War II as adults. In July 1990 the average Politburo member was born in 1929. 1 Although they came from blue-collar families, almost none of these highly educated people had a personal history of manual labor. 2 Their ties with the working class were thinner than those of the leaders of the era of Khrushchev and Brezhnev. Their leader was Gorbachev.
