1996 Mikhail Gorbachev presidential campaign 1996 Mikhail Gorbachev presidential campaign The Mikhail Gorbachev presidential campaign, 1996 was an electoral campaign effort by former President of the Soviet Union and General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1996 Russian presidential election. Gorbachev's candidacy was beset by the obstacles of both minimal media coverage and a high level of distain towards him amongst the Russian populace. Gorbachev's candidacy ended in defeat during the first round of the election. The effort was the first, and only, electoral campaign of Gorbachev's post-Soviet political career. Gorbachev had led the Soviet Union from 1985
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