Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union formed" Gorbachev, but that "long ago Gorbachev had internally rebelled against the native System." In the same vein, Gorbachev's adviser Andrey Grachev, noted that he was a "genetic error of the system." Gorbachev's policy of "glasnost" (literally "openness") meant the gradual democratisation of the party. Because of this, the role of the Central Committee was strengthened. Several old apparatchiks lost their seats to more open-minded officials during the Gorbachev era. The plan was to make the Central Committee an organ where discussion took place; and in this Gorbachev succeeded. By 1988, several people demanded reform within the Communist Party itself.
Mikhail Gorbachev major campaign to limit alcohol consumption, which Gorbachev—who believed it would improve health and work efficiency—oversaw. His wife keenly supported the measure. As a result, crime rates fell and life expectancy grew slightly between 1986 and 1987. The reform had significant costs to the Soviet economy, resulting in losses of up to $100 billion between 1985 and 1990. Gorbachev later considered the campaign to have been an error. In April 1986 the Chernobyl disaster occurred; in the immediate aftermath, officials fed Gorbachev incorrect information to downplay the incident. As the scale of the disaster became apparent, 336,000 people were evacuated