Question: When did Mikhail Gorbachev suggest a new policy of 'democratization' throughout Soviet society.
About the article "Dissolution of the Soviet Union", section "Soviet Union centre – one-party democracy".

Candidate passages:
Soviet Union centre – one-party democracy.
At the 28–30 January 1987 Central Committee Plenum Mikhail Gorbachev suggested a new policy of 'democratization' throughout Soviet society.
Specifically he suggested that future Communist Party elections should offer a choice between multiple candidates, elected by secret ballot, however the CPSU delegates at the Plenum watered down Gorbachev's words and democratic choice within the Communist Party was never significantly implemented.
In addition Gorbachev radically expanded the scope of Glasnost stating that no subject was off limits for open discussion within the media, although the cautious intelligensia took almost a year to begin pushing the boundaries to see if he meant what he said.
For the first time, the Communist Party leader, speaking at the Plenum of the Central Committee, appealed over the heads of its members for the people's support in exchange for a dramatic expansion of liberties.
The tactic proved successful in that within two years political reform was invulnerable to the party 'conservatives', the unintended consequence was that having saved reform, the January 1987 choice, ultimately killed the very system it was designed to save.
On 7 February 1987 dozens of political prisoners were freed in the first group release since the Khrushchev years in the 1950s.
On May 6, 1987 Pamyat, a Russian Nationalist group, held an unsanctioned demonstration in Moscow.
The authorities not only did not break up the demonstration by force—but later, the police kept traffic out of the demonstrators' way while they marched to an impromptu meeting with Boris Yeltsin, head of the Moscow Communist Party, and at that time one of Mikhail Gorbachev's closest allies in the ruling Politburo.
On July 25, 1987 a group of 300 Crimean Tatars, calling for the right to return to the Crimean homeland from which they were deported in 1944, staged a noisy demonstration for several hours near the Kremlin Wall as dozens of police and soldiers looked on.
On 10 September 1987, after a lecture from hard-liner Yegor Ligachev at the Politburo for allowing two small unsanctioned demonstrations on Moscow streets, Boris Yeltsin wrote a letter of resignation to Gorbachev who was holidaying on the Black Sea.
When Gorbachev received the letter he was stunned – nobody in Soviet history had voluntarily resigned from the ranks of the Politburo.
At the October 27, 1987 plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Yeltsin, frustrated that Gorbachev had not addressed any of the issues outlined in his resignation letter asked to speak.
He expressed his discontent with both the slow pace of reform in society, the servility shown to the General Secretary, and opposition to him from Ligachev making his position untenable, before requesting to resign from the Politburo.
This was sensational.
Besides the fact that nobody had ever quit the Politburo, no one in the party had ever had the audacity to address a leader of the party in such a manner in front of the Central Committee since Leon Trotsky in the 1920s.
In his reply, Gorbachev accused Yeltsin of "political immaturity" and "absolute irresponsibility".
Nobody in the Central Committee backed Yeltsin.
Within days news of Yeltsin's actions leaked and rumours of his 'secret speech' at the Central Committee spread throughout Moscow.
Soon fabricated "samizdat" versions began to circulate.
This was the beginning of Yeltsin's re-branding as a rebel and he continued to grow in popularity as an anti-establishment figure.
The next four years of political struggle between Yeltsin and Gorbachev was a major factor in the destruction of the Soviet Union.
On November 11, 1987 Yeltsin was fired from the post of First Secretary of the Moscow Communist Party.
After the deaths of three successive elderly Soviet leaders since 1982, the Soviet Politburo elected Gorbachev Communist Party General Secretary in March 1985, marking the rise of a new generation of leadership.
Under Gorbachev, relatively young reform-oriented technocrats, who had begun their careers in the heyday of "de-Stalinization" under reformist leader Nikita Khrushchev, rapidly consolidated power, providing new momentum for political and economic liberalization, and the impetus for cultivating warmer relations and trade with the West.
On the Western front, President Reagan's administration had taken a hard line against the Soviet Union.
Under the Reagan Doctrine, the Reagan administration began providing military support to anti-communist armed movements in Afghanistan, Angola, Nicaragua and elsewhere.
The Reagan administration also persuaded the Saudi Arabian oil companies to increase oil production.
This led to a three-times drop in the prices of oil, and oil was the main source of Soviet export revenues.
Following the USSR's previous large military buildup, President Reagan ordered an enormous peacetime defense buildup of the United States Military; the Soviets did not respond to this by building up their military because the military expenses, in combination with collectivized agriculture in the nation, and inefficient planned manufacturing, would cause a heavy burden for the Soviet economy.
It was already stagnant and in a poor state prior to the tenure of Mikhail Gorbachev who, despite significant attempts at reform, was unable to revitalise the economy.
In 1985, Reagan and Gorbachev held their first of four "summit" meetings, this one in Geneva, Switzerland.
After discussing policy, facts, etc., Reagan invited Gorbachev to go with him to a small house near the beach.
The two leaders spoke in that house well over their time limit, but came out with the news that they had planned two more (soon three more) summits.
The second summit took place the following year, in 1986 on October 11, in Reykjavík, Iceland.
The meeting was held to pursue discussions about scaling back their intermediate-range ballistic missile arsenals in Europe.
The talks came close to achieving an overall breakthrough on nuclear arms control, but ended in failure due to Reagan's proposed Strategic Defense Initiative and Gorbachev's proposed cancellation of it.
Nonetheless, cooperation continued to increase and, where it failed, Gorbachev reduced some strategic arms unilaterally.
Fundamental to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Gorbachev policy initiatives of Restructuring ("Perestroika") and Openness ("Glasnost") had ripple effects throughout the Soviet world, including eventually making it impossible to reassert central control over Warsaw Pact member states without resorting to military force.
On June 12, 1987, Reagan challenged Gorbachev to go further with his reforms and democratization by tearing down the Berlin Wall.
In a speech at the Brandenburg Gate next to the wall, Reagan stated:While the aging communist European leaders kept their states in the grip of "normalization", Gorbachev's reformist policies in the Soviet Union exposed how a once revolutionary Communist Party had become moribund at the very center of the system.
The growing public disapproval of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, and the socio-political effects of the Chernobyl accident in Ukraine increased public support for these policies.
By the spring of 1989, the USSR had not only experienced lively media debate, but had also held its first multi-candidate elections.
For the first time in recent history, the force of liberalization was spreading from West to East. 
In January 1987, Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), announced the new policy of demokratizatsiya (democratization).
Under the concept of demokratizatsiya, all candidates in Soviet elections would still be required to be CPSU members.
However, while in the past, only one candidate per position had existed, under demokratizatsiya the electorate would have a choice between multiple candidates per position, although all candidates would be CPSU members.
The concept was introduced by Gorbachev to enable him to circumvent the CPSU hardliners who resisted his perestroika and glasnost reform campaigns, while still maintaining the Soviet Union as a single-party communist state.
In December 1988, the 1977 Soviet Constitution was amended to create a new legislative body, the Congress of People's Deputies (CPD), to replace the old Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union.
The Congress of People's Deputies consisted of 2,250 deputies.
750 deputies (one third) were reserved for the CPSU and its affiliated organizations, however, the remaining two-thirds would be elected under the principles of demokratizatsiya, with 750 under the system of the old Soviet of the Union (one deputy per 300,000 citizens) and 750 under the system of the old Soviet of Nationalities (an equal number of deputies for each of the fifteen Union Republics).
Elections for the new legislature were set for March, 1989. 
While he supported German reunification, Mitterrand was reluctant to take action because Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev warned it would lead to a military coup d'état in the Soviet Union.
Mitterrand did speak in favour of reunification in July 1989. 
Gorbachev increasingly found himself caught between criticism by conservatives who wanted to stop reform and liberals who wanted to accelerate it.
Meanwhile, despite his intention to maintain a one-party system, the elements of a multiparty system already were crystallising.
Despite some setbacks, he continued his policy of democratisation, and he enjoyed his worldwide perception as the reformer.
In June 1988, at the CPSU's Nineteenth Party Conference, the first held since 1941, Gorbachev and his supporters launched radical reforms meant to reduce party control of the government apparatus.
He again called for multicandidate elections for regional and local legislatures and party first secretaries and insisted on the separation of the government apparatus from party bodies at the regional level as well.
In the face of an overwhelming majority of conservatives, Gorbachev still was able to rely on party obedience to the higher authorities to force through acceptance of his reform proposals.
Experts called the conference a successful step in promoting party-directed change from above.
At an unprecedented emergency Central Committee plenum called by Gorbachev in September 1988, three stalwart old-guard members left the Politburo or lost positions of power.
Andrei Gromyko retired (had decided to retire before the meeting) from the Politburo, Yegor Ligachev was relieved of the ideology portfolio within the Politburo's Secretariat, and Boris Pugo replaced Politburo member Mikhail Solomentsev as chairman of the powerful CPSU Party Control Committee.
The Supreme Soviet then elected Gorbachev chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, giving Gorbachev the attributes of power that previously Leonid Brezhnev had.
These changes meant that the Secretariat, until that time solely responsible for the development and implementation of state policies, had lost much of its power.
Meaningful changes also occurred in governmental structures.
In December 1988, the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union approved formation of a Congress of People's Deputies, which constitutional amendments had established as the Soviet Union's new legislative body.
The Supreme Soviet then dissolved itself.
The amendments called for a smaller working body of 542 members, also called the Supreme Soviet, to be elected from the 2,250-member Congress of People's Deputies.
To ensure a Communist majority in the new parliament, Gorbachev reserved one-third of the seats for the CPSU and other public organisations.
The March 1989 election of the Congress of People's Deputies marked the first time that voters of the Soviet Union ever chose the membership of a national legislative body.
The results of the election stunned the ruling elite.
Throughout the country, voters crossed off the ballot unopposed Communist candidates, many of them prominent party officials, taking advantage of the nominal privilege of withholding approval of the listed candidates.
However, the Congress of People's Deputies that emerged still contained 87 percent CPSU members.
Genuine reformists won only some 300 seats.
In May the initial session of the Congress of People's Deputies electrified the country.
For two weeks on live television, deputies from around the country railed against every scandal and shortcoming of the Soviet system that could be identified.
Speakers spared neither Gorbachev, the KGB, nor the military.
Nevertheless, a conservative majority maintained control of the congress.
Gorbachev was elected without opposition to the chairmanship of the new Supreme Soviet; then the Congress of People's Deputies elected a large majority of old-style party apparatchiks to fill the membership of its new legislative body.
Outspoken opposition leader Yeltsin obtained a seat in the Supreme Soviet only when another deputy relinquished his position.
The first Congress of People's Deputies was the last moment of real control for Gorbachev over the political life of the Soviet Union.
In the summer of 1989, the first opposition bloc in the Congress of People's Deputies formed under the name of the Inter-Regional Group.
The members of this body included almost all of the liberal and Russian nationalist members of the opposition led by Boris Yeltsin.
A primary issue for the opposition was the repeal of Article 6 of the constitution, which prescribed the supremacy of the CPSU over all the institutions in society.
Faced with opposition pressure for the repeal of Article 6 and needing allies against hard-liners in the CPSU, Gorbachev obtained the repeal of Article 6 by the February 1990 Central Committee plenum.
Later that month, before the Supreme Soviet, he proposed the creation of a new office of president of the Soviet Union, for himself to be elected by the Congress of People's Deputies rather than the popular elections.
Accordingly, in March 1990 Gorbachev was elected for the third time in eighteen months to a position equivalent to Soviet head of state.
Former first deputy chairman of the Supreme Soviet Anatoly Lukyanov became chairman of the Supreme Soviet.
The Supreme Soviet became similar to Western parliaments.
Its debates were televised daily.
By the time of the Twenty-Eighth Party Congress in July 1990, the CPSU was regarded by liberals and nationalists of the constituent republics as anachronistic and unable to lead the country.
The CPSU branches in many of the fifteen Soviet republics began to split into large pro-sovereignty and pro-union factions, further weakening central party control.