Gorbachev Re-Elected As Head Of Communist PartyIn a vindication of his sweeping economic and political reforms, Mikhail Gorbachev withstands severe criticisms from his opponents and is re-elected head of the Soviet Communist Party by an overwhelming margin. Gorbachev\u2019s victory was short-lived, however, as the Soviet Union collapsed in late 1991.<\/p>\n
Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union in 1985 and immediately began to push forward with reforms in both Russia\u2019s domestic and foreign policies. On the domestic front, he argued for greater economic freedom and a gradual movement toward free market economics in certain fields. He also demanded more political freedom, and released a number of political prisoners. In his foreign policy, Gorbachev sought to thaw Cold War relations with the United States. He indicated his desire to work for substantive arms control measures, and began to curtail Soviet military and political involvement in nations such as Afghanistan and Angola. By 1990, many people celebrated Gorbachev as a savior for bringing true reform to the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
At home, however, Gorbachev was reviled by many Russian hard-liners that castigated him for weakening the hold of the Communist Party and for weakening its military power. During a Communist Party congress in July 1990, Gorbachev fired back at his critics. \u201cThere is no way to bring back the past, and no dictatorship\u2013if someone still entertains this crazy idea\u2013will solve anything,\u201d he declared. As for his domestic reforms, Gorbachev noted, \u201cThis is already a different society\u201d that needed different policies. In response to the charge that he had been \u201csoft\u201d in dealing with anticommunist movements in Russia\u2019s eastern European allies, he shouted, \u201cWell, do you want tanks again? Shall we teach them again how to live?\u201d With Gorbachev\u2019s words ringing in their ears, the delegates to the congress re-elected him as head of the Soviet Communist Party.<\/p>\n
Gorbachev\u2019s success, however, was extremely short-lived. While many applauded his reforms, by 1990 the Soviet Union was suffering from terrible economic problems, increasingly angry internal political squabbling, and a general feeling of uneasiness among the Russian people. In December 1991, with most of its eastern European allies already having overthrown their communist governments and with the Soviet republics seceding from the USSR, Gorbachev resigned as head of the Party and as president. With his action, the Soviet Union ceased to exist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gorbachev Re-Elected As Head Of Communist PartyIn a vindication of his sweeping economic and political reforms, Mikhail Gorbachev withstands severe criticisms from his opponents and is re-elected head of the Soviet Communist Party by an overwhelming margin. Gorbachev\u2019s victory was short-lived, however, as the Soviet Union collapsed in late 1991. Gorbachev came to power in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3512],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cold-war"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8533\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}