The Decembrists’ Desacralization during the Glasnost and Post-Soviet Eras

Abstract

After Leonid Brezhnev’s death in 1982, the Soviet Union plunged into a period of political uncertainty which was masked over by the Supreme Soviet and state media’s assertions of “business as usual.” Rapid changes in the country’s leadership occurred after the untimely deaths of Brezhnev’s successors, Iurii Andropov, former head of the KGB, who became General Secretary of the CPSU from November 1982 to February 1984, and Konstantin Chernenko, from April 1984 to March 1985. After Chernenko’s death, with the appointment of a relatively unknown Party functionary, Mikhail Gorbachev, to the position of General Secretary a decidedly new phase began. Though fully-formed by the Soviet educational and political system, Gorbachev undertook political, economic and social reform to address the problems plaguing the system: a heavily bureaucratized, centralized economy, a lack of initiative and innovation, cultural and intellectual stagnation, alcoholism, and other social issues. The new policies—perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness)—meant to effect gradual change from within the system from the top down. In comparison to the changes of the post—Soviet era, the Gorbachev-era changes now appear moderate, but at the time they seemed drastic.