There can be little doubt that Kriuchkov, like many of the other plotters, originally supported Gorbachev’s perestroika, which they understood as a set of reforms intended to make the Soviet system more competitive without undermining its foundations. But once they realized that it threatened not only the party, to which the most pragmatic of them had no ideological attachment, but also the political structure of the state and their place in it, their attitude changed.
