The six and a half years between the launching of the reform programme in April 1985 and the aftermath of the abortive coup of August 1991 have seen the CPSU transformed from the dominant institution within the political system to one which has been denied a place in the post-coup political arrangements. From the outset until he quit the party on 24 August, Gorbachev had publicly assumed that the party would maintain its leadership in society. With the assistance of reformist allies in the party's ranks, Gorbachev imposed upon that organisation a series of reforms designed to achieve this end. The effect of these changes was not what the reformers had hoped, and their failure was part of the party's more general failure to adjust to forces over which it had no control. This failure to adjust was a significant factor in the party's ultimate demise.

From traditional campaign to democratisation

From the outset, Gorbachev and those around him recognised that part of the problem which they had inherited from the ‘time of stagnation’ lay in the party. The Communist Party had become lax, with many of its leading positions at all levels filled by people who were more concerned with a comfortable life than with struggling for the construction of socialism.