This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures.

This lecture in the series The Rediscovery of Politics, given by Geoffrey Hosking, was originally broadcast in 1988.

In my lectures so far, I have asserted that a sense of community in very diverse forms is being restored in the Soviet Union

and is beginning to make itself felt in the political

system hitherto monopolised by the Communist Party. Having thus, as it were, put the cart before the

horse, I'd like to end where most observers would begin and examine how the political leadership

sees the situation and what changes it would like to bring about.

That means looking closely at Mr Gorbachev.

He's established such a position of dominance

and stamped his personal style so markedly on the current reform programme

that one is bound to ask how such a man could appear in the midst of what we're used to regarding

as the faceless Communist Party apparatus.

One manifest difference between Gorbachev and his predecessors is that he's younger and much

better educated. He's more representative of the urban and sophisticated society that the

Soviet Union is becoming.

But that alone is not to say much.

It's the kind of education and early experience, which is crucial.

Gorbachev comes from the fertile southern region of Stavropol,

an area of Cossack traditions and rich peasant farming,

but an area which underwent severe famine after collectivisation, in fact, in the first year or two of the young Michael's life.

When he became first secretary in Stavropol, nearly 40 years later, he devoted a lot of attention

to agriculture, which, as elsewhere in the country, was in a grossly demoralised

...