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 Soviet Union. Coit D. Blacker wrote in 1990 that the Soviet leadership "appeared to have believed that whatever loss of authority the Soviet Union might suffer in Eastern Europe would be more than offset by a net increase in its influence in Western Europe". Nevertheless, it is unlikely that Gorbachev ever intended for the dismantling of Communism in Warsaw Pact countries. Rather, he assumed that the Communist parties of Eastern Europe could be reformed in a similar way to the reforms he hoped to achieve in the CPSU. Just as "perestroika" was aimed at making the USSR more efficient economically