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 the upper echelons of the Soviet political landscape, to implicate General Valentin Varennikov, a member of the August coup plotters, and General Vladislav Achalov, another August coup conspirator. These persons were characterised as individuals "who were prepared to remove Gorbachev from his presidential office unconstitutionally" and "were more than capable of using unauthorised violence against nationalist separatists some months earlier". Brown criticises Gorbachev for "a conscious tilt in the direction of the conservative forces he was trying to keep within an increasingly fragile coalition" who would later betray him; he also criticises Gorbachev "for his tougher line and heightened rhetoric