Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

by Vladislav M. Zubok

His goal, Medvedev remembers, was “to turn the Soviets into permanently governing bodies.”72 The “Soviets” were revolutionary “Councils” or assemblies of workers, peasants, and soldiers, in whose name Lenin had seized power in Russia in 1917. Gorbachev’s concept was breathtaking in its ambition: to return Russian socialism to square one, and reroute the great experiment in the direction of democracy. The starting point of political reforms would be a convocation, after national competitive elections, of a 2,250-member Congress of People’s Deputies—an institution without parallels anywhere in the world. This Congress would represent all national republics and ethnic autonomies of the Soviet Union, all groups of its population, and all its major public institutions. The Congress would have supreme power: to change the constitution, to appoint a government, and to select a permanent law-making assembly, the Supreme Soviet.