Dissolution of the Soviet Union Central Committee Secretariat. In the fall of 1985, Gorbachev continued to bring younger and more energetic men into government. On September 27, 55-year-old Nikolai Ryzhkov replaced 79-year-old Nikolai Tikhonov as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, effectively the Soviet prime minister, and on October 14, Nikolai Talyzin replaced Nikolai Baibakov as chairman of the State Planning Committee (GOSPLAN). At the next Central Committee meeting on October 15, Tikhonov retired from the Politburo and Talyzin became a candidate. On December 23, 1985, Gorbachev appointed Yeltsin First Secretary of the Moscow Communist Party replacing Viktor Grishin. Gorbachev continued to press for greater
Freedom Sunday for Soviet Jews 1987, the eve of the Washington, D.C. Summit between Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan, an estimated 250,000 people demonstrated on the National Mall in an unprecedented display of solidarity for Soviet Jewry. The mass mobilization, organized by a broad-based coalition, about half of that number came from the Greater New York area under the leadership of the Greater New York Coalition for Soviet Jewry, the National Conference for Soviet Jewry (NCSJ), the Council of Jewish Federations (CJF) and the United Jewish Appeal (UJA), brought activists from across the United States to demand that Gorbachev extend his