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
Mikhail Gorbachev collapse moved toward social democracy. Of mixed Russian and Ukrainian heritage, Gorbachev was born in Privolnoye, Stavropol Krai to a peasant family. Growing up under the rule of Joseph Stalin, in his youth he operated combine harvesters on a collective farm before joining the Communist Party, which then governed the Soviet Union as a one-party state. While studying at Moscow State University, he married fellow student Raisa Gorbacheva in 1953 prior to receiving his law degree in 1955. Moving to Stavropol, he worked for the Komsomol youth organisation and became a keen proponent of the de-Stalinization reforms of Soviet leader