Mikhail Gorbachev from the area around Chernobyl. Taubman noted that the disaster marked "a turning point for Gorbachev and the Soviet regime". Gorbachev later described the incident as one which made him appreciate the scale of incompetence and cover-ups in the Soviet Union. From April to the end of the year, Gorbachev became increasingly open in his criticism of the Soviet system, including food production, state bureaucracy, the military draft, and the large size of the prison population. Gorbachev's primary goal as general secretary was to revive the Soviet economy after the stagnant Brezhnev years. In 1985, he announced that the economy
Mikhail Gorbachev also saw this publication as the start of a campaign to oust Gorbachev. Meanwhile, on 12 June 1991 Boris Yeltsin was elected President of the Russian Federation by 57.3% of the vote (with a turnout of 74%). In contrast to the reformers' moderate approach to the new treaty, the hard-line apparatchiks, still strong within the CPSU and military establishment, completely opposed anything which might lead to the break-up of the Soviet Union. On the eve of the treaty's signing, hardline Soviet leaders, calling themselves the 'State Committee on the State of Emergency', launched the August coup in an attempt to