2 - Democratising the political system

Summary

Political reform was not, at the outset, one of the chief priorities of the new administration. Together with a change of leadership at all levels, Gorbachev was much more concerned at the 27th Party Congress in February 1986 to secure an acceleration of economic growth, which he described as the ‘key to all our problems, immediate and long-term, economic and social, political and ideological, domestic and foreign’, and the only way in which a new kind of Soviet socialism could be built. The Central Committee meetings that took place after the Congress reflected the same emphases: the June 1986 plenum dealt with the 1986–90 economic plan, and the plenum a year later was concerned with the ‘radical reform’ of Soviet economic management. Addressing the Polish Sejm in July 1988, Gorbachev conceded that he had not, to begin with, fully appreciated the importance of political reform both for its own sake and for the contribution it could make to other social and economic objectives. Speaking to Indian journalists in late 1986, however, he made clear that he intended to secure a political system that functioned ‘more effectively’, and at the Central Committee meeting which took place in January 1987 political reform became one of the central priorities of the new leadership.