Dissolution of the Soviet Union and decisions of specific individuals (usually Gorbachev and Yeltsin). One characteristic example of intentionalist writing is historian Archie Brown's "The Gorbachev Factor", which argues Gorbachev was the main force in Soviet politics at least in the period 1985–1988 and even later largely spearheaded the political reforms and developments as opposed to being led by events. This was especially true of the policies of "perestroika" and "glasnost", market initiatives and foreign policy stance as political scientist George Breslauer has seconded, labelling Gorbachev a "man of the events". In a slightly different vein, David Kotz and Fred Weir have contended that Soviet
Mikhail Gorbachev Another of those promoted by Gorbachev was Boris Yeltsin, who was made Secretary of the Central Committee in July 1985. For the first two years of his leadership, Gorbachev's watchword was "acceleration". He claimed that the Soviet Union would accelerate industrial output to the extent that it would match that of the United States by 2000. To boost agricultural productivity, he merged five ministries and a state committee into a single entity, Agroprom. By late 1986, he was referring to this reform as a failure. Drunkenness was a major social problem in the 1980s, and Andropov had planned for a