For Chișinevschi, one's attitude toward the USSR was his most important criterion of Leninist orthodoxy. Thus, when the Soviets changed course at the 20th Party Congress (which Chișinevschi attended), he zealously changed course and immediately began spreading insidious critical allusions about his old friend Gheorghiu-Dej, hoping to cover up his own past crimes and abuses. At the March 1956 plenary, he and Miron Constantinescu called for a liberalisation, something that Gheorghiu-Dej categorically rejected. He did not make his proposal out of genuinely reformist sentiments, but rather because "his enduring opportunism, his unsurpassed chameleon-type of political conduct materialized in his will to associate himself with the group that was most probable to win the battle". As "a true follower of Moscow’s line, whatever its twist or turn, he grasped an opportunity to undermine Gheorghiu-Dej and re-compose for himself the image of a fighter for intra-party democracy". Thinking that "a critical re-assessment of the Stalinist purges in Romania was inevitable", he aligned himself in opposition to Gheorghiu-Dej.