This week in history: January 23-29 23 January 2012 This Week in
History provides brief synopses of important historical events
whose anniversaries fall this week. 25 years ago: Gorbachev
issues dire warning to Communist Party Central Committee Soviet
Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev’s address to
the plenary session of the Central Committee on January 27,
1987, warned of an enormous social crisis in the USSR for which
the party leadership bore responsibility. Without mentioning
names, Gorbachev described “serious discrepancies in planning,”
and “subjective approaches, imbalances, instability. . .
Disregard for laws, report-padding, bribe-taking and
encouragement of toadying and adulation [that] had a deleterious
influence on the moral atmosphere in society.” It was clear that
he was describing the regime of Leonid Brezhnev. While the
crisis was very real, Gorbachev’s supposed “concern for people,
for the conditions of their life and work and for social well-
being” was a diversion. In the na