By the end of 1986 Gorbachev had become convinced of the need for institutional reform in the party that involved not simply the changing of individual psychology, but structural change in the party's organisational machinery. He had been conducting informal consultations with party leaders for some time about the solutions he was to unveil at the forthcoming CC plenum, and he found considerable resistance to his proposals. The result was the postponement on three occasions of the plenum, which did not open until 27 January 1987. In the weeks prior to the plenum, the main public focus of party life was events in Kazakhstan.

On 16 December 1986 party first secretary in Kazakhstan, Dinmukhamed Kunaev, an old Brezhnev protégé, was removed and replaced by Gennadii Kolbin. Kolbin was a Russian, and the reaction in the Kazakh capital Alma Ata was almost immediate. There were demonstrations and violence in the streets, as supporters of the former leader registered their protest at the change in leadership. The degree to which the popular reaction was in response to the appointment of an ethnic Russian or was something organised by the well-developed Kunaev political machine remains a matter for conjecture, but this was significant in party terms for two reasons. First, despite some moderation in practice, this appointment seemed to signal continuing commitment to maintaining a central interventionist personnel policy.