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
Central Committee elected by the 27th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union by Gennady Kolbin, an ethnic Russian who had never lived in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. On 23 December 1985, the Politburo appointed Boris Yeltsin, an official from Sverdlovsk, First Secretary of the Moscow City Committee ("de facto" mayor of Moscow). Gorbachev had endorsed the appointment, heeding the advice of Yegor Ligachev (the party's informal second-in-command) who personally recommended him. In contrast, Nikolai Ryzhkov told Gorbachev in private that "He [Yeltsin] will cause you only grief. I would not recommend him." Yeltsin, who had introduced himself as something of a centrist at the 27th Congress, proved himself to be a