Mikhail Gorbachev erode Gromyko's dominance of Soviet foreign policy while at the same time sending a signal to the U.S. government that he wanted to improve Soviet-U.S. relations. On 11 March 1985, Chernenko died. Gromyko proposed Gorbachev as the next General-Secretary; as a longstanding party member, Gromyko's recommendation carried great weight among the Central Committee. Gorbachev expected much opposition to his nomination as Chernenko's successor, but ultimately the rest of the Politburo supported him. Shortly after Chernenko's death, the Politburo unanimously elected Gorbachev as his successor; they wanted him over another elderly leader. Although not a well-known figure to the Soviet public,
Eleventh five-year plan (Soviet Union) to admit that there were economic "shortcomings" and acknowledged the ongoing "food problem". Other topics for discussion were the need to save energy resources and to improve the quality of Soviet produced goods. By the 1980s the Soviet economy had stagnated, with the natural gas industry the only Soviet fuel industry to surpass the five-year plan's indicators. Although 40,000 robots were produced during the plan, advances in computer technology decreased, due to growing disillusionment with the Soviet system. At the end of his life, former Premier Alexei Kosygin feared the complete failure of this five-year plan, claiming that the incumbent