Why the heck wasnt Gorbachev Assassinated?

I mean seriously, even back in 1985, his initial policies on certain economic factors such as domestic alcohol consumption were clearly mucking things up fairlt badly for the Soviet Union.
Yes, massive reform was needed, and he seemed to be one of the few willing ton push forward with it at the time, but how the heck could no one see exactly what the untested Gorbachev was ineptly leading them too?
 
The Soviet Union in 1985 didn't handle its internal leadership issues like Stalin. Everyone saw themselves as a potential victim if that became a way of handling leadership disputes.

They probably also realized that assassinating their own leader would cause a lot of panic in Washington and around the world. This was extremely dangerous in the nuclear age. There would be all sorts of paranoid fears unleashed as to why it was done.

As for why Gorbachev was picked in 1985, he was the youngest man in the Politburo. Everyone else was ancient. In four years the Soviet Union had four men as General Secretary - Brezhnev died in 1982, Andropov in 1984, Chernenko in 1985. Then came Gorbachev. They needed someone young to provide continuity because Brezhnev's generation was dying, and Andropov had been a patron of Gorbachev promoting him.

If Brenzhnev had seen fit to make sure more young men were promoted during his rule, there would have been potential competitors to Gorbachev. As it were, Gorbachev was best fit - young, a reformer, but also an idealistic Communist.
 
There were not many ways forward. Returning to high Stalinism was off the table for obvious reasons. And any other course of reform would likely be seen by the party as a wrong step.
 

RousseauX

Donor
Because post-Stalin you don't kill leaders for political failures anymore, you remove them and replace them with your own guy.

That was what was tried in August 1991, except the coup failed because the people no longer wanted to go with the pre-1985 system.
 
iirc there WAS an attempted coup to force him out shortly after he came to power, tanks and everything, which was countered by a public protest a hundred times larger than those conducting the coup and they gave up
 
iirc there WAS an attempted coup to force him out shortly after he came to power, tanks and everything, which was countered by a public protest a hundred times larger than those conducting the coup and they gave up

Actually it was shortly before he lost the power :)
 
According to the joke at the time, it's because the queue to assassinate him was longer than the bread queue...
 
A few of the reasons (though perhaps not all of the reasons) were:

1) Gorbachev was the protege of Suslov and Andropov - as such, the hardliners and the KGB saw Gorbachev as one of "their side".

2) The KGB, the organization most able to execute assassinations, was under tight Party control and Gorbachev was the boss of the Party.

3) No-one wanted to go back to the days of capricious killing, not even the "Stalinists" in the party.

4) Gorbachev did very well at securing political power for himself and purging anyone who might oppose him - within a couple years he had concentrated more power in his own hands than Brezhnev (also a very good political operator) had managed in 18 years.

5) Most of what Gorbachev did actually followed the consensus on how to fix the Soviet problems.

6) Gorbachev had the way paved for him by Andropov and Suslov - there weren't many left who had the power and/or prominence to form an effective conspiracy against him.

7) No-one believed that Gorbachev's reforms would be so damaging to the Soviet Union until it was too late to act.

fasquardon
 
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