Yeltzin - Moscow

Moscow

On 11 March 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary of the CPSU by the Politburo after the death of Konstantin Chernenko. Gorbachev's primary goal was to revive the Soviet economy however he soon realized that fixing the Soviet economy would be nearly impossible without reforming the political and social structure of the Communist nation. To begin these reforms he immediately began gathering in Moscow a younger and more energetic governing team of Communist Party members. On 4 April 1985 Yeltsin received a call from Gorbachev's leading protege Yegor Ligachev summoning him to Moscow to take up position as Head of the Construction Department of the Party`s Central Committee. Less than three months later he was promoted to be Secretary for Construction of the Central Committee a position within the powerful CPSU Central Committee Secretariat.

On 23 December 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev appointed Yeltsin First Secretary of the Moscow Communist Party effectively `Mayor' of the Soviet capital, and as a result on 18 February 1986 Yeltsin was invited to become a Candidate (ie.non-voting) Member of the Politburo . As a politburo member Yeltsin was also given a country house (dacha), his was previously occupied by Gorbachev who now moved to a much bigger and more luxurious purpose built dacha nearby. During this period Yeltsin portrayed himself as a reformer and populist (for example, he took a trolleybus to work), firing and reshuffling his staff several times. He became popular among Moscow residents for firing corrupt Moscow party officials.