Word: gorbachevized
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Boris Yeltsin has an exquisite sense of timing. Just when Mikhail Gorbachev had soundly defeated hard-line rival Yegor Ligachev and secured his control over the divided Communist Party, Yeltsin threw down an even greater challenge. He quit the party, threatening to wrest the embattled reform movement from Gorbachev's hands and turn the party into a sideshow...
...five years Gorbachev has been in power, his every move has been dogged by these two men, shadow members of a strange political troika. Ligachev was the archconservative, unwilling to sacrifice ideological certainties for the risks of change; Boris Yeltsin, the maverick populist, wanting to go further, faster in forcing the pace of reform. At times the two have seemed like Gorbachev's alter egos, the right and left boundary markers on his political horizon. But mostly they have been his rivals, vying to force him off the careful centrist course he has charted for himself...
Last week, as Gorbachev struggled to bring the party whole and united out of the 28th Congress, the two men figured in one of his most remarkable triumphs -- and abrupt setbacks. After 10 days of harsh attack, he put down the right- wing revolt with a display of personal authority so convincing that his victory might justly have been dubbed "Ligachev's last stand." It was then, from his left flank, that Yeltsin pounced. When the chairman of the Russian parliament announced he was pulling out of the party, he paved the way in effect for a potentially dangerous split...
...Russian republic, which covers 76% of the U.S.S.R.'s landmass and is home to 147 million of its 289 million people, he holds a strong power base where he is now free to try his own more radical brand of reform. Even if the party does not split formally, Gorbachev could be left trying to implement perestroika through a rump dominated by moderates unable to keep pace with leftists outside the party...
Ligachev was the first to make his move. The blistering attacks against Kremlin policies in the opening days of the Congress left no doubt that conservatives were intent on forcing the party to the right -- and the party leader with it. Wielding his muscle, Gorbachev handily kept the job of General Secretary. The right wing decided instead to wage war for the key post of deputy, who would supervise day-to-day party business. Whoever controlled that job would in effect control the party...