How Mikhail Gorbachev became president of the Soviet Union. Yuri Andropov, the dying Secretary General, named Gorbachev as his successor, but the nomination was suppressed for two years by the conservatives.

Follows the attempted coup while Gorbachev was away in March 1988, at how the Kremlin tried to cover up the Chernobyl disaster. Afterwards, glasnost flourished and Soviet society opened up.