The Soviet State System

Abstract

The first two years of Mikhail Gorbachev’s tenure as general secretary of the CPSU gave little indication of the dramatic changes to come in the Soviet state system. In his speech to the 27th Congress in February 1986 his remarks on the subject contained few new initiatives, and these lacked specifics. Thus, he promised ‘the development of socialist self-government for the people’, but noted that the party was to be the ‘leading force and chief guarantor’ of that development. He announced that new proposals were being developed to enhance the authority of local councils — called soviets — in economic affairs and spoke of the need to ‘strengthen the prestige’ of the deputies who were elected to these councils, but offered no details. He hinted at ‘necessary adjustments’ in Soviet electoral practice. Finally, he alluded to the problem of the dominance of administrative personnel in political life and the need to hold them more accountable before the people’s elected representatives. But such proposals had been heard before. As far as Soviet parliamentary institutions and practices were concerned, it was a speech that Brezhnev or Chernenko could have made.