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This chapter traces Gorbachev's progress from birth in March 1931 in a peasant family in southern Russia to his appointment as the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party with responsibility for agriculture in 1978. The impact of Stalin's terror on the older generation of Gorbachev's family and his childhood wartime experiences are noted, as is the importance of his study for five years in the Law Faculty of Moscow University. There he met his wife, Raisa, and their relationship was to remain exceptionally close, both intellectually and emotionally. Upon graduation, Gorbachev returned to his native Stavropol region and began a rapid ascent through the ranks of the Komsomol and Communist Party, becoming party chief of the whole region in 1970. As such, he had the opportunity to greet such senior party figures as Yury Andropov and Mikhail Suslov on their visits to this spa territory. Their good opinion of Gorbachev, as well as that of Fedor Kulakov, a former Stavropol party secretary who, by the 1970s, was a member of the Politburo, helped facilitate Gorbachev's move to Moscow when Kulakov, who had been the overseer of agriculture, died in 1978.

When Gorbachev moved to Moscow in November 1978, he became – at the age of 47 – the youngest member of the predominantly elderly Soviet top leadership team. He received rapid promotion, becoming a candidate member of the Politburo in 1979 and a full member in 1980, while retaining the Secretaryship of the Central Committee he had been accorded in 1978. It was only after the death of Leonid Brezhnev in November 1982, however, and the choice of Andropov to succeed him, that Gorbachev entered the inner circle of the leadership. He was unusual for a Politburo member in consulting widely among social scientists and in taking full advantage of Moscow's cultural life. Andropov, when he was dying, tried to elevate Gorbachev above Konstantin Chernenko and make him his heir apparent, but the old guard in the Soviet leadership prevented this. There was also an attempt to prevent Gorbachev becoming de facto ‘second secretary’ after Chernenko succeeded Andropov in March 1984, but Gorbachev eventually became the clear number two within the party hierarchy and the obvious, and in the end unanimous, choice to succeed Chernenko as General Secretary when the latter died in March 1985. Meantime, Gorbachev had begun to show that he was a potential leader of a different kind by impressing Margaret Thatcher and the British public on a visit to the UK in December 1984 and, in the same month, making a speech in Moscow which castigated Soviet stereotypical thinking and introduced some of the new ideas that were to become so important during his years as General Secretary.

The chapter concentrates on one of the four transformations identified in Ch. 6 as necessary if the Soviet Union were to make a transition from authoritarianism to democracy – the need to transform national and centre‐periphery relations. The unintended consequences of democratization and of reform in the area of inter‐ethnic and federal relations led to the attempted coup of August 1991 to prevent the signing of a new and voluntary Union Treaty, which would have legitimized greatly decentralized power within the Soviet Union. The chapter discusses the general issue of state boundaries and democratic transitions and pays attention to various national hotspots in the Soviet Union of the perestroika years, among them Alma‐Ata (Almaty), Nagorno‐Karabakh, Tbilisi, and the Baltic states. Gorbachev's tactical retreat in the winter of 1990‐91 in the face of a conservative backlash is analysed, as is his break with the conservative forces in the spring of 1991 and his launch of the Novo‐Ogarevo process, designed to preserve the Union on the basis of a pacted settlement. The chapter concludes with discussion of the extremely damaging effects of the August coup on Mikhail Gorbachev's authority and on his prospects of preserving any kind of Union. On 25^th December 1991, Gorbachev signed a decree divesting himself of his authority as President of the USSR and transferring his powers as Commander‐in‐Chief of the armed forces to Boris Yeltsin who had been elected President of Russia in June of that year. Control of nuclear weapons, together with the Soviet seat at the United Nations, passed to Russia as the largest successor state to the USSR and its ‘continuer state’.

A back‐handed tribute to the power of ideas had been paid by the Soviet leadership prior to Gorbachev's coming to power through the lengths to which they went not only to promote official Marxism‐Leninism but also to keep out of circulation any heterodox political ideas. Gorbachev embraced new concepts more boldly than any previous General Secretary and engaged in a sharp struggle with conservative opponents of change within the Soviet establishment to have thinking that was radically new in the Soviet context accepted and acted upon. To some extent, the fresh ideas were codified into another orthodoxy known as ‘New Thinking’ or ‘New Political Thinking’, but the new openness meant that this was a fast‐changing body of doctrine, in which, for example, an endorsement by Gorbachev of ‘socialist pluralism’ quite rapidly was broadened into advocacy of ‘political pluralism’. Gorbachev's power of appointment went hand in hand with his support of new ideas. He was able to change the balance of influence before he could alter the balance of power, for he had a much freer hand in choosing aides and advisers than he had in elevating an ally to the Politburo. His changes to that body were also important, however, especially his rapid promotion of Alexander Yakovlev. Gorbachev's own ideas evolved in his discussions both with domestic advisers and with foreign politicians, especially such West European social democrats as Felipe Gonzalez. Conceptual change is an important species of political innovation in any society, especially in a system, such as the Soviet one, in which all political actions were required to adhere to an officially sanctioned ideology. Support for perestroika (reconstruction), democratization, pluralism, and glasnost (openness, transparency) and other heterodox ideas amounted to a conceptual revolution that had profound implications for Soviet politics and society.

A central thesis of the book, elaborated especially in this chapter, is that from the outset of his General Secretaryship, Gorbachev was seriously interested in political change as well as in economic reform, but that in the course of the struggle to introduce it, he came to the realization that reform was not enough and that the political system had to be comprehensively transformed. The chapter discusses six stages of transformation between March 1985 and December 1991 as well as the fourfold nature of the transformation that was required: first, the movement from authoritarianism to political pluralism; second, the need to move from a command economy with virtually 100% state ownership of the means of production to a market economy with a substantial private sector; third, the need to create a genuine federation or a looser confederation in place of the pseudo‐federalism in which the aspirations of the more self‐conscious nations within the Soviet borders had been ruthlessly suppressed; and, fourth, the need to transform foreign policy. The dilemma for Gorbachev was that the fourfold transformation was an interlinked process: any three of these basic changes were likely to be undermined by the absence of a fourth; yet, as each was implemented to a greater or lesser degree, its side effects produced complications in the other spheres. Among the political changes analysed are the breakthrough represented by the Nineteenth Party Conference of 1988, the movement from party to state power, the advent of contested elections for a new legislature, the indirect election by that legislature of Gorbachev as President, and the failure to split the Communist Party.

Gorbachev was able to have a decisive impact on the development of ideas concerning the Soviet Union's relationship with the outside world and on the actual conduct of Soviet foreign policy by virtue of half a dozen key appointments. These were the elevation of Eduard Shevardnadze to the post of Foreign Minister, in succession to Andrey Gromyko, in the summer of 1985; the replacement of Boris Ponomarev as head of the International Department of the Central Committee by Anatoly Dobrynin in 1986; the promotion of Alexander Yakovlev to Politburo and Secretariat membership (with oversight of international affairs from the autumn of 1988); the replacement of Konstantin Rusakov by Vadim Medvedev as head of the Socialist Countries Department of the Central Committee in 1986; the appointment of Anatoly Chernyaev as Gorbachev's principal foreign policy aide in 1986; and the appointment of Georgy Shakhnazarov as another close aide two years later. These appointments both reflected and facilitated Gorbachev's adoption of new thinking in the foreign policy sphere with, for example, a concern for mutual security and an emphasis on interdependence taking the place of an antagonistic ‘class approach’ to international relations; a novel emphasis on universal interests and values that undercut the traditional ‘two camps’ approach; and ‘reasonable sufficiency’ becoming the criterion for justifying Soviet military expenditure. The sources of the new thinking are discussed, and in the conduct of state‐to‐state relations, particular attention is paid to the Soviet‐United States relationship and to relations with Europe, both West and East. The changes Gorbachev introduced in Soviet foreign policy made possible the transformation of the East European political landscape and it is especially notable that he refused to attempt to stem the democratic tide that flowed across the Eastern part of the continent even when it threatened to overwhelm him.

Obstacles to democratization and pre‐conditions for transformative change are examined, as are changing evaluations of Mikhail Gorbachev. The weakness of the dissident movement in the first half of the 1980s and the modesty of expectations of change when Gorbachev succeeded Konstantin Chernenko as Soviet leader are noted. The radicalization of Gorbachev's policies is related to his learning process, to the strengthening of his political power between 1985 and 1988, and to societal pressures. Gorbachev outwitted the traditional holders of institutional power who imposed constraints upon the General Secretary's freedom of action but he was also responsible for the creation of new countervailing powers, more broadly based than the old ones, which ultimately undermined his institutional authority. The diversity of view within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union became increasingly apparent as the novel phenomenon of a serious reformer in the Kremlin allowed these divergent opinions to come out into the open.

The Soviet Union's ‘nationalities problem’ was one of the fundamental hurdles that Mikhail Gorbachev failed to clear in his attempt at systemic transformation of the USSR. Less understood, and far less studied, was Gorbachev's ‘federalism problem’. The institutional weaknesses of Soviet ‘federalism’ presented serious obstacles to would‐be reformers of the political system as well as to opponents of reform. After 70 years of Soviet rhetoric, there was deep confusion over just what terms like ‘federal’ or ‘sovereignty’ really meant. Efforts to construct a ‘renewed’ USSR and a new Russian Federation were deeply constrained by Soviet institutions and concepts.

Gorbachev's two major failures were in economic reform and in resolution of the ‘national question’, although that statement has to be qualified by the observation that the problems involved were so intractable that the idea that a new leader could have come along and ‘solved’ them would be the height of naivety. The tension between two contradictory aims – improving the system and constructing the system on different principles – was especially acute in the economic sphere. It was in the attempted radical reconstruction of the economic system that Gorbachev encountered the most effective resistance on the part of agencies whose co‐operation was necessary both for the everyday running of the economy and the implementation of reform. As in other spheres of policy, Gorbachev's own views became more radical over time, and by 1990, partly under the influence of economist Nikolay Petrakov, he accepted that an essentially market economy (albeit one closer to a West European social democratic variant than to capitalism American‐style) was desirable. When a team of economists jointly appointed by Gorbachev and by Boris Yeltsin produced in 1990 a ‘500 Hundred Days Programme’ that would allegedly have created a market economy in the Soviet Union within that short time period, Gorbachev hesitated, at first supporting the proposals and then, partly under pressure from within the system, retreating from them. During 1991, Gorbachev attempted to keep in play several economic options; indecision and inconsistency in this area left the economy in limbo and weakened Gorbachev's authority.

Of the four transformations outlined in Ch. 6, two of the four had, by the end of the 1980s, been successful beyond the dreams of Soviet dissidents and of the most optimistic Western observers at the time Gorbachev came to power. That is to say, the political system had become substantially pluralist and partially democratized and international relations had been still more comprehensively transformed. Economic reform and nationalities policy – along with some bad (as well as good) appointments – were, in contrast, areas of relative failure for Gorbachev. A decisively important achievement, however, was the dismantling of Communism (defined in the chapter) that occurred remarkably peacefully in a country that had been under Communist rule for seven decades. There was nothing inevitable either about the timing of the end of the Soviet state or about the way in which, under Gorbachev's leadership, the system was transformed. Taking all his mistakes and some undoubted failures into account – along, however, with the almost insuperable obstacles he had to overcome – Gorbachev has strong claims to be regarded as one of the greatest reformers in Russian history and as the individual who made the most profound impact on world history in the second half of the 20th century.

Following the adoption of a programme for political transformation at the XIX Conference, Gorbachev and those around him set about trying to translate it into practice. But the effect of this programme was not only to open up the political system to mass involvement but also challenges by new elite actors from outside the Soviet elite. As a result, the group around Gorbachev found themselves facing opposition not only from conservatives who believed that change had gone too far but also from radicals who believed that change had not gone far enough. Against a background of increasing economic difficulty and heightened local and regional nationalism, declarations of sovereignty by republican governments led to the fragmenting of the system. In this situation, conservative Soviet elements mobilized and struck back, principally in the form of the 1991 putsch, which opened the way to the dismantling of the Soviet Union by Boris Yeltsin in alliance with other national leaders.

On achieving power, Gorbachev initially sought to introduce a range of political and economic measures that would remedy the system's problems without fundamentally changing its structure. However, this process of reform became radicalized in the second half of 1986. The notions of perestroika, glasnost and democratisation signalled the attempted liberalization of political life. This radicalization of the programme provoked more determined resistance on the part of conservative opponents, which in turn stimulated further radicalization of the measures Gorbachev sought to introduce. This dynamic led to the adoption at the XIX Conference of the Communist Party in mid‐1988 of measures designed to revolutionize the political system. The programme of liberal reform had become a programme of systemic transformation, which paradoxically undercut the authority of the party and unleashed new political forces.

Triumphalists make no effort to understand why the Soviets disarmed, reformed, and collapsed. They simply assume the Reagan administration caused these policy changes. Chapters 4 and 5 correct this misperception. Drawing upon Soviet sources, these chapters examine decision making within the Kremlin and the causes of Soviet behavior. Chapter 4 discredits the claim that the Soviet Union became more cooperative with the West and withdrew from its war in Afghanistan because the Reagan administration compelled it to do so. It demonstrates that a reform movement had been growing in the USSR since the 1950s. Soviet reformers sought to modernize the economy, end the arms race, and improve relations with the West. Moreover, within weeks of launching the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan, Soviet leaders concluded that it was a mistake and began looking for a face-saving way out. Thus, these policies were rooted in domestic needs and debates and were not examples of Moscow acquiescing to American demands, as triumphalists claim. In short, the Reagan administration did not compel Moscow to adopt democratic reforms and withdraw from Afghanistan.

This chapter examines the reaction of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. It considers why Gorbachev reacted the way he did, particularly with respect to the possibility that the fall of the Berlin Wall might—and did—lead to the reunification of Germany on Western terms and to the new Germany's entry into NATO. It cites two factors that might account for Gorbachev's indifference to the fate of Eastern Europe: first, he and his Kremlin colleagues were distracted by domestic developments in the Soviet Union; second, he was guided, or perhaps misguided, by a new set of foreign policy priorities that made the Wall's fall appear less significant than in fact it would turn out to be.

This chapter discusses former Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev's challenge to his own original plan: a heroic model of multinationalism. Gorbachev dropped the restoration concept entirely and instead proposed to build a vast new edifice from the Atlantic to the Urals: the fulfillment of his desire to create a common European home of many rooms. States under this model would retain their own political orders, but cooperate via international economic and military institutions. Ironically, former East German dissident movements proposed a similar model. They wanted new construction as well, though of a more limited expanse. Their goal was the construction of an improved socialism in East Germany, with a curiously prescient kind of “property pluralism” that would allow both private property and state intervention in times of economic crisis.