Rules Unravel 1985–91

Abstract The Brezhnev years had enabled a series of serious problems to build up, with the result that the sort of style of leadership Brezhnev had sought to exercise needed to be jettisoned in favour of a more assertive model of leadership. Gorbachev sought to exercise such leadership. The rules enabled him to do this. However, his problem was that as policy became radicalized, many of the changes he introduced altered the basic framework of Soviet politics, which in turn rendered some of the rules less effective. In this way, his actions contributed directly to the unravelling of the rules and the collapse of the Soviet system.