The first sign of trouble came barely five minutes after Mikhail Gorbachev opened the 28th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party last week. A delegate from the far eastern region of Magadan proposed an unprecedented resolution, calling for nothing less than the resignation of the entire Central Committee and its ruling Politburo. The daring delegate also wanted the party leadership to tell the 4,657 delegates why so little had been accomplished since the last party Congress, in February 1986, which had launched Gorbachev's ambitious -- and increasingly beleaguered -- program of perestroika to transform the Soviet Union.
Presiding alone amid dozens...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
