Background to the XXVIII Congress

Abstract

The XXVIII Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) met against the background of mounting political turmoil, and deep uncertainty regarding the future of the CPSU and the fate of the USSR. The very direction of the policies of perestroika and glasnost hung in the balance. The dismantling of the Stalinist ‘command-administrative system’ was well advanced, but had unleashed in the process an unprecedented re-politicisation of Soviet society which sought more radical changes and often changes which threatened the stability of the system itself. The party confronted a series of intractable problems across the whole spectrum of policy-making — from domestic policy, the nationalities question, the economy, to foreign and defence policy. These issues sharply divided the party and raised directly the question of the viability of Gorbachev’s reform strategy. The prospect of reform turning into anarchy and in the process creating the climate for a conservative backlash which would reverse the whole reform process was posed directly.1 Gorbachev’s policy of perestroika had by 1990 progressed much further in transforming the Soviet system than the more halting efforts at de-Stalinisation initiated by Khrushchev at the historic XX Congress of the CPSU (1956), and developed by him at the XXII Congress (1961).