History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union indications Gorbachev may have been in control prior to Chernenko's death as he was announced as the new General Secretary the day after Chernenko died on March 10, 1985. Gorbachev instituted policies of glasnost, perestroika, and acceleration. Glasnost allowed freedom of speech in the Soviet Union and a flourishing of political debate within the Communist Party to a degree not seen since the Russian Revolution, perestroika was an attempt to restructure the political and particularly the economic organisation of the country, while acceleration meant faster development of the economy. This period of liberalisation ultimately ended in the dissolution of the
1996 Mikhail Gorbachev presidential campaign During the course of his candidacy, Gorbachev, accompanied by his wife Raisa, traveled the country to deliver stump speeches. Gorbachev regularly encountered hecklers. Gorbachev once responded to hecklers by exclaiming, On the stump, Gorbachev defended his record, claiming that he had tried to save the Soviet Union, but that he had been betrayed by both communist hard-liners and an ambitious Yeltsin. He additionally placed blame on the 1991 coup attempt for undermining his efforts to preserve the Soviet Union. In his speeches Gorbachev would often refer to himself in third-person. He spent most of his time on the campaign trail