To the extent that hopes were vested in Gorbachev, this reflected more than anything the absence of any domestic opposition in the Soviet Union. Only the Party could clean up the mess it had made, and by good fortune the Party had elected as its leader a man with both the energy and the administrative experience to make the effort. For in addition to being unusually well educated and widely read for a senior Soviet bureaucrat, Gorbachev displayed a distinctively Leninist quality: he was willing to compromise his ideals in order to secure his goals.
