“When on earth will it end, this leadership of the Communist Party?”: the image of power in the minds of the Soviet people during the time of perestroika

The article investigates the particularities of the image of power in the mentality of the Soviet people during the Perestroika period. It analyses the previously non-cited sources, such as citizens’ letters and appeals sent to state officials and authority bodies in late 1980s. The author for the first time demonstrates how the process of Soviet mental attitudes affects the assessment of the transformation of power structures. The aspired transformations and images of power in the USSR as constructed by the authors of these letters are also studied. It is concluded that during perestroika the society went on treating the organs of the Soviet power as state models, but criticized the red-tape of the bureaucracy and wanted the Communist Party to be removed from power. At the same time, the traditional mental attitudes of the population did not allow them to accept the elements of parliamentary and presidential republic, multi-party system and political competition among parties.