Gorbachev's first indication of the chasm between Soviet rhetoric and reality came when he traveled to Moscow to attend university. He found a striking disparity in wealth between his home and the capital city. And the idyllic portrait of collective farms peddled in Moscow was a great distance from the reality Gorbachev knew well. Still, he remained committed to the Soviet ideology. Stalin died in 1953, after more than 30 years as the Soviet general secretary. “All night long we were part of the crowd going to see his coffin,” Gorbachev recalled later.

After graduation, he returned to Stavropol with his young wife, Raisa, who had been his philosophy instructor at Moscow State. He began his career as an administrator for the Komsomol—the omnipresent communist youth branch—and rose quickly through the party hierarchy, advancing to agriculture secretary. He benefited greatly from the patronage of several prominent Soviets who vacationed at the Crimean beach resorts and spas in Gorbachev's province. Yuri Andropov, who led the KGB, was perhaps the most important.

Despite several failed harvests in his region, Gorbachev ascended to the 14-member ruling Politburo in Moscow at 47. It was a clique of geriatrics. Gorbachev was nearly a decade younger the than next youngest member, and 21 years younger than the group's average age. His patron, Andropov, became premier in November 1982, but died 14 months later. The energetic and charismatic Gorbachev was passed over; the feeble Konstantin Chernenko, though, would haven an even shorter tenure than Andropov.

Gorbachev would not miss a second opportunity to seize power. He returned home to his dacha at 4 a.m. on March 11, 1985, and found Raisa waiting up for him. Wary of KGB listening devices in their house, they went for a walk as the sun rose. “We can't go on living like this,” he told her.

In Washington, Reagan was awoken and told of Chernenko's death. “How am I supposed to get anyplace with these Russians,” he asked his wife, Nancy, “if they keep dying on me?”

Gorbachev knew better than nearly anyone how far the Soviets lagged behind. As a young party official, he had traveled to Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, and West Germany. He had taken three trips to France and spent several weeks driving around the country in a rented Renault with his wife and two other couples in 1966. In Alberta, Canada, in 1983, he met a wealthy farmer whose dairy cows yielded an average of 4,700 kilograms of milk each year; the Soviets drew less than half of that. Gorbachev was confounded.

He recognized that political changes had to come first. Gorbachev the reformer dashed forward, calling for glasnost—an openness of critical thought, conversation, and dissent, notions the Russian people had never known. He brought the quiet discussions that had happened in Soviet kitchens for years squarely into public. As he pressed forward, Gorbachev was keenly aware of the ill-fated reform efforts of Nikita Khrushchev during the early 1960s, whose work was brushed aside by party stalwarts.