Communist Party of the Soviet Union reinvigorated the party ideology by adding new concepts and updating older ones. A positive consequence of this was the allowance of "pluralism of thought" and a call for the establishment of "socialist pluralism" (literally, socialist democracy). He introduced a policy of "glasnost" (Russian: "openness", "transparency") in 1986, which led to a wave of unintended democratization. According to Russian scholar Archie Brown, the democratization of the Soviet Union brought mixed blessings to Gorbachev; it helped him to weaken his conservative opponents within the party but brought out accumulated grievances which had been oppressed during the previous decades. In reaction to these
Mikhail Gorbachev carried out only personnel shifts rather than structural change. Andropov encouraged Gorbachev to expand into policy areas other than agriculture, preparing him for future higher office. With Andropov's encouragement, Gorbachev sometimes chaired Politburo meetings. In April 1983, Gorbachev delivered the annual Lenin's birthday speech; this required him re-reading many of Lenin's later writings, in which the first Soviet leader had called for reform, and encouraged Gorbachev's own conviction that reform was needed. In May 1983, Gorbachev was sent to Canada, where he met Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and spoke to the Canadian parliament. There, he met and befriended the Soviet