During 1989 the worst fears of those who had foreseen the potential of the changes wrought at the XIX Conference were realised. The working out of those reforms created a political situation which the party and its leadership could no longer control. From the end of March 1989, the party leadership was reactive, trying to keep up with changes which were occurring faster than it could control and propelled by political forces for the most part outside that leadership and of the party as a whole. This year saw the explosion onto the Soviet scene of a whole range of autonomous political groups whose activity called into question the party's constitutionally enshrined political monopoly and its capacity to continue to encapsulate the main stream of political activity within its bounds. While such activity had begun in 1988, most spectacularly with the mobilisation of ethnic forces in the Nagorno-Karabakh affair, it was in 1989 that non-nationalist political groups began to crowd onto the political stage. The principal vehicle for this was the changes to the national political structure adopted at the XIX Conference.

The parliamentary challenge

The elections for the Congress of People's Deputies began on 26 March 1989. The period leading up to the election saw an extensive nomination process in which, for the first time since the revolution, the populace was involved in an electoral campaign in which there was the possibility of real choice.