page_title: Communist Party of the Soviet Union
section_title: Gorbachev and the party's demise (1985–91)
hierarchical_section_title: Communist Party of the Soviet Union / History / Gorbachev and the party's demise (1985–91)
caption_attribution_description: English: “Mikhail Gorbachev”. General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Mikhail Gorbachev speaking at a news conference after a Soviet-American summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1986. Русский: «Генеральный секретарь ЦК КПСС М.С.Горбачёв». Генеральный секретарь ЦК КПСС М.С.Горбачёв выступает на пресс-конференции в столице Исландии городе Рейкьявике во время советско-американской встречи на высшем уровне. Исландия, Рейкьявик
context_page_description: The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the founding and ruling political party of Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union. The CPSU was the sole governing party of the Soviet Union until 1990, when the Congress of People's Deputies modified Article 6 of the most recent 1977 Soviet constitution, which had granted the CPSU a monopoly over the political system.
  The party started in 1898 as the Bolsheviks, a majority faction from the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, led by Vladimir Lenin, who seized power in the October Revolution of 1917. After 74 years, it was dissolved on 29 August 1991 on Soviet territory, soon after a failed coup d'état by hard-line CPSU leaders against Soviet president and party general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. It was outlawed entirely three months later on 6 November 1991 on Russian territory.
  The CPSU was a communist party based on democratic centralism. This principle, conceived by Lenin, entails democratic and open discussion of policy issues within the party, followed by the requirement of total unity in upholding the agreed policies. The highest body within the CPSU was the Party Congress, which convened every five years.
context_section_description: The Politburo elected Gorbachev as CPSU General Secretary on 11 March 1985, one day after Chernenko's death. When Gorbachev acceded to power, the Soviet Union was stagnating but was stable and might have continued largely unchanged into the 21st century if not for Gorbachev's reforms.
  Gorbachev conducted a significant personnel reshuffling of the CPSU leadership, forcing old party conservatives out of office. In 1985 and early 1986 the new leadership of the party called for uskoreniye (Russian: ускоре́ние, lit. 'acceleration'). Gorbachev reinvigorated the party ideology, adding new concepts and updating older ones. Positive consequences of this included the allowance of  "pluralism of thought" and a call for the establishment of "socialist pluralism" (literally, socialist democracy). Gorbachev introduced a policy of glasnost (Russian: гла́сность, meaning openness or transparency) in 1986, which led to a wave of unintended democratization. According to the British researcher of Russian affairs, Archie Brown, the democratization of the Soviet Union brought mixed blessings to Gorbachev; it helped him to weaken his conservative opponents within the party but brought out accumulated grievances which had been suppressed during the previous decades. 
  In reaction to these changes, a conservative movement gained momentum in 1987 in response to Boris Yeltsin's dismissal as First Secretary of the CPSU Moscow City Committee. On 13 March 1988, Nina Andreyeva, a university lecturer, wrote an article titled "I Cannot Forsake My Principles". The publication was planned to occur when both Gorbachev and his protege Alexander Yakovlev were visiting foreign countries. In their place, Yegor Ligachev led the party organization and told journalists that the article was "a benchmark for what we need in our ideology today". Upon Gorbachev's return, the article was discussed at length during a Politburo meeting; it was revealed that nearly half of its members were sympathetic to the letter and opposed further reforms which could weaken the party. The meeting lasted for two days, but on 5 April a Politburo resolution responded with a point-by-point rebuttal to Andreyeva's article.
  Gorbachev convened the 19th Party Conference in June 1988. He criticized leading party conservatives - Ligachev, Andrei Gromyko and Mikhail Solomentsev. In turn, conservative delegates attacked Gorbachev and the reformers. According to Brown, there had not been as much open discussion and dissent at a party meeting since the early 1920s.
  Despite the deep-seated opposition to further reform, the CPSU remained hierarchical; the conservatives acceded to Gorbachev's demands in deference to his position as the CPSU General Secretary. The 19th Conference approved the establishment of the  Congress of People's Deputies (CPD) and allowed for contested elections between the CPSU and independent candidates. Other organized parties were not allowed. The CPD was elected in 1989; one-third of the seats were appointed by the CPSU and other public organizations to sustain the Soviet one-party state. The elections were democratic, but most elected CPD members opposed any more radical reform. The elections featured the highest electoral turnout in Russian history; no election before or since had a higher participation rate. An organized opposition was established within the legislature under the name Inter-Regional Group of Deputies by dissident Andrei Sakharov. An unintended consequence of these reforms was the increased anti-CPSU pressure; in March 1990, at a session of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, the party was forced to relinquish its political monopoly of power, in effect turning the Soviet Union into a liberal democracy.
  The CPSU's demise began in March 1990, when state bodies eclipsed party elements in power by . From then until the Soviet Union's disestablishment, Gorbachev ruled the country through the newly created post of President of the Soviet Union. Following this, the central party apparatus didn't play a practical role in Soviet affairs. Gorbachev had become in
caption: Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the CPSU and the Soviet Union, as seen in 1986
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