Mikhail Gorbachev Nikita Khrushchev. He was appointed the First Party Secretary of the Stavropol Regional Committee in 1970, in which position he oversaw construction of the Great Stavropol Canal. In 1974 he moved to Moscow to become First Secretary to the Supreme Soviet and in 1979 became a candidate member of the Politburo. Within three years of the death of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, following the brief "interregna" of Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, Gorbachev was elected general secretary by the Politburo in 1985. Although committed to preserving the Soviet state and to its socialist ideals, Gorbachev believed significant reform was necessary
1996 Mikhail Gorbachev presidential campaign by Viktor Anpilov and a group of Anpilov's supporters. They condemned Gorbachev for his role in the collapse of the Soviet Union, and held signs which read "No Place for Traitors on the Holy Ground of Stalingrad". Anpilov tried to get Gorbachev's wife Raisa to take flowers from him, and mocked her and her husband for being "rude ingrates" when she refused them. During a campaign trip through St. Petersburg local officials refused to allow Gorbachev to embark on visits that he had planned to take to three factories, with the officials telling Gorbachev that the factories were closed to