When Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev first arrived in Moscow in 1978 as the new overseer of Soviet agriculture, many foreign observers dismissed him as a provincial politician whose career would be undone by the country`s chronic farm problems.
But Gorbachev, though he had spent two decades in the hinterlands of the North Caucasus, had powerful friends in the Kremlin hierarchy who steadily advanced him toward the pinnacle of power, even as he presided over a run of dismal harvests.
Within seven years of his transfer to Moscow, Gorbachev became general secretary of the Communist Party, outmaneuvering more experienced and entrenched rivals. He proved to be a dynamic, charismatic leader with a plan for sweeping economic and political change.
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