However, due to the immense popularity of Mikhail Gorbachev with ordinary East Germans disillusioned with their own hardline Communist leaders, the DSF's membership grew massively in the last years of the regime which many interpret as a sign of support of Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika by the East German people.

The number of state farms grew from less than 1, 500 in 1929 to just over 23, 000 by the end of the Gorbachev era in the late 1980s.

Erich Honecker and guests of honor like Mikhail Gorbachev celebrate the 40th ( and last ) anniversary of the socialist regime of the German Democratic Republic on 7 October 1989.

Honecker and the East German government refused to implement similar reforms in the GDR, with Honecker reportedly telling Gorbachev: " We have done our perestroika, we have nothing to restructure ".

However, after a final round of talks with Gorbachev, Honecker signed a hard-line communiqué that openly attacked the policies of the West German government.

Gorbachev already did not think much of Zhivkov ; he had lumped Zhivkov in with a group of inflexible hardliners that included East Germany's Erich Honecker, Czechoslovakia's Gustáv Husák and Romania's Nicolae Ceaușescu.

When Honecker was toppled in October 1989, Gorbachev hoped that Modrow would become the new leader of the SED.

From left to right: Husák of Czechoslovakia, Zhivkov of Bulgaria, Honecker of East Germany, Gorbachev of the USSR, Ceaușescu of Romania, Jaruzelski of Poland, and Kádár of Hungary

This led Gorbachev to lump Ceauşescu with Czechoslovakia's Gustáv Husák, Bulgaria's Todor Zhivkov and East Germany's Erich Honecker as a " Gang of Four " inflexibly hardline leaders unwilling to make the reforms he felt necessary to save Communism.

Chernenko's position began to look precarious ; Gorbachev was getting stronger by the day.

Actual political power lay in the positions of President of the Soviet Union ( held by Gorbachev ) and President of the Russian SFSR ( held by Yeltsin ).

Greater political and social freedoms, instituted by the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, created an atmosphere of open criticism of the communist regime.

By the time Gorbachev ushered in the process that would lead to the dismantling of the Soviet administrative command economy through his programs of glasnost ( political openness ), uskoreniye ( speed-up of economic development ) and perestroika ( political and economic restructuring ) announced in 1986, the Soviet economy suffered from both hidden inflation and pervasive supply shortages aggravated by an increasingly open black market that undermined the official economy.

A 1987 conference convened by Soviet economist and Gorbachev adviser Leonid Abalkin, concluded: " Deep transformations in the management of the economy cannot be realised without corresponding changes in the political system.

To proceed with reforms opposed by the majority of the communist party, Gorbachev aimed to consolidate power in a new position, President of the Soviet Union, which was independent from the CPSU and the soviets ( councils ) and whose holder could be impeached only in case of direct violation of the law.

But by using structural reforms to widen opportunities for leaders and popular movements in the union republics to gain influence, Gorbachev also made it possible for nationalist, orthodox communist, and populist forces to oppose his attempts to liberalize and revitalize Soviet communism.

Introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the second half of the 1980s, Glasnost is often paired with Perestroika ( literally: Restructuring ), another reform instituted by Gorbachev at the same time.

The word was frequently used by Gorbachev to specify the policies he believed might help reduce the corruption at the top of the Communist Party and the Soviet government, and moderate the abuse of administrative power in the Central Committee.

Because of the coup attempted by Moscow hardliners against the Gorbachev government in August 1991, the Union Treaty never was signed.

On 11 March 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev was chosen by the Politburo as the new General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

From the mid-1940s the country was subject to Soviet economic control and saw considerable Russification of its peoples, but Latvian culture and infrastructures survived such that, during the period of Soviet liberalisation under Mikhail Gorbachev, Latvia once again took a path towards independence which eventually succeeded in August 1991 and was recognised by Russia the following month.

The incident aided Mikhail Gorbachev in the implementation of his reforms ( by removing numerous military officials opposed to him ), and reduced the prestige of the Soviet military among the populace, thus helping bring an end to the Cold War.

Gorbachev also aimed to seek detente with the West and end the Cold War that was no longer economically sustainable to be pursued by the Soviet Union.

Within three years of the deaths of Soviet Leaders Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko, Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo in 1985.

Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo on 11 March 1985, only three hours after Chernenko's death.

The elder Kim was unmoved by the social and ecomomic reforms of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev starting in 1985, and this contributed to the decline in relations with Moscow.

Despite the promise to spare his family, Bukharin's wife, Anna Larina, was sent to a labor camp, but she survived to see her husband officially rehabilitated by the Soviet state under Mikhail Gorbachev in 1988.

In an interview in 2000, Mikhail Gorbachev, in response to the comment " In the 1980s, you warned about the unprecedented dangers of nuclear weapons and took very daring steps to reverse the arms race ," said " Models made by Russian and American scientists showed that a nuclear war would result in a nuclear winter that would be extremely destructive to all life on Earth ; the knowledge of that was a great stimulus to us, to people of honor and morality, to act in that situation.

After Mikhail Gorbachev took the office of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in March 1985, he began a series of political reforms that were resisted by many established members of the Communist Party.

Gorbachev increasingly found himself caught between criticism by conservatives who wanted to stop reform and liberals who wanted to accelerate it.

The Law on Cooperatives enacted in May 1988 was perhaps the most radical of the economic reforms during the early part of the Gorbachev era.

In June 1988, at the CPSU's Nineteenth Party Conference, Gorbachev launched radical reforms meant to reduce party control of the government apparatus.

* 1988 – U. S. President Ronald Reagan begins his first visit to the Soviet Union when he arrives in Moscow for a superpower summit with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

Two months later, Reagan and Gorbachev agreed to sign a treaty to eliminate intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe, and the Supreme Soviet ordered Rust to be released in August 1988 as a goodwill gesture to the west.

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, or Gorbachov ( more accurately reflecting the pronunciation of his name ) (; born 2 March 1931 ), is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the Soviet Union, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991.

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.

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.

The Law on Cooperatives, enacted in May 1988, was perhaps the most radical of the economic reforms during the early part of the Gorbachev era.

Gorbachev had signaled Soviet interest in improving relations with all countries in the Asia-Pacific region, including South Korea, as explained in his July 1986 Vladivostok and August 1988 Krasnoyarsk speeches.

Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev addresses the UN General Assembly in December 1988.

Powell claimed in an article for The Guardian on 7 December 1988 that the new Western-friendly foreign policy of Russia under Mikhail Gorbachev heralded " the death and burial of the American empire ".

During his second term in office, in May – June 1988, more than five years after using the term " evil empire ," Reagan visited the new reformist General Secretary of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow.

Another wave of reforms came in 1988 with the arrival at the helm of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Vadim Bakatin, one of Mikahil Gorbachev ’ s closest allies.

At the Ronald Reagan / Mikhail Gorbachev summit in Moscow ( 29 May – 1 June 1988 ) between leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union, it was decided that Cuban troops would be withdrawn from Angola, and Soviet military aid would cease, as soon as South Africa withdrew from Namibia.

The final troop withdrawal started on May 15, 1988, and ended on February 15, 1989 under the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev.

In 1988, in the spirit of Glasnost, Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev promised increased religious toleration.

A formal petition written to Gorbachev and senior leaders in Moscow asked for the unification of the enclave with Armenia, but the claim was rejected in the spring of 1988.

In 1988, he was invited to perform at the superpower conference in Washington, D. C .. At this conference, he met and befriended Mikhail Gorbachev.

Signed in Washington, D. C. by U. S. President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev on December 8, 1987, it was ratified by the United States Senate on May 27, 1988 and came into force on June 1 of that year.

* Seiitsu Tachibana, " Much ado about something: The factors that induced Reagan and Gorbachev to conclude the INF Treaty " Hiroshima Peace Science, Vol. 11 page. 151-182 ( 1988 )

The island was the site of a December 8, 1988 meeting between US President Ronald Reagan, President-elect George Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

In the mid-1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev launched a policy called perestroika which was economic restructuring ; Deposits at savings institutions began to increase and a major reorganization of the banking system was implemented in 1988.

Ligachev supported reform of the Soviet Union and initially supported Gorbachev ; however, as Gorbachev ’ s policies of perestroika and glasnost began to resemble social democratic policies he distanced himself from Gorbachev, and by 1988 he was recognized as the leader of the more conservative, anti-Gorbachev faction of Soviet politicians.