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The 27th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was held from 25 February to 6 March 1986 in Moscow. This was the first congress presided over by Mikhail Gorbachev as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU. In accordance with the pattern set 20 years earlier by Leonid Brezhnev, the congress occurred five years after the previous CPSU Congress. Much had changed in those five years. Key figures of Soviet politics, Mikhail Suslov, Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, Dmitriy Ustinov, and Konstantin Chernenko had died, and Mikhail Gorbachev had become General Secretary of the Party. For this reason the congress was widely anticipated, both at home and abroad, as an indicator of Gorbachev's new policies and directions. The congress was attended by 4993 delegates. It elected the 27th Central Committee.
The agenda of the congress:
- CC CPSU Report and the Party objectives (Given by Mikhail Gorbachev)
- New Party Statute release
- Political report of CC CPSU
- CPSU Central Revisional Commission report
- Report About the economic and social development of the USSR on 1986-1990 and in 2000 perspective
- Elections of the central Party organs
This Congress became the penultimate in the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.