Gorbachev's Political Revolution

3 Anyhow, his personal attractive qualities and his remarkable profile of a Young Communist League member and a Law graduate from the Moscow State University, presented him as the most suitable Party Leader the USSR needs in order to optimize the unstable economic situation he inherited when heading the Communist Party. "With great power, comes great responsibility." 4 .
             As noted, the present economic, social and political system of the USSR is a product of development over a sixty-year span. The basic problems of the existing Soviet system have led to the present crisis, and have made a new reform-oriented policy crucially necessary, lie in the economic sphere. The Soviet system should be reformed if developments are leading to contradictions and crises. Nevertheless, several attempts to reform the policy have been made – either in the core of the USSR under Khrushchev or in the Soviet-bloc countries (Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia).5 However, a few strikes and protests do not necessary denote the end of the Communist Regime, nor the will of a new policy. People remained loyal to socialism, despite its imperfections. Yes, an economic reform was essential, a more liberal and free-market as well, even a greater freedom regarding the populace's private life, however was the shift from the powerful Soviet entity towards Democracy, provoked from below and should we consider the factor that the collapse of the regime and the transition was accomplished in a fairly peaceful atmosphere, in the absence of external invasion or violent internal upheaval?6.
             According to a study performed by David Kotz and Fred Weir, the party-state elite, or in other words the people who hold the governmental power have contributed the most for the collapse of the regime. A group called "Movement for Socialist Renewal" which includes party and government officials of senior rank, has claimed itself as the authentic voice of the Soviet elite.