People wrote to and called their deputies, asking them to speak out. They discussed the events with family and friends, often through the night, trying to understand and put a precise name to what was happening and to elaborate their own positions.

Everything about the forum was extraordinary.

At the beginning of the Congress, for the first time, an alternative candidate for chair was proposed: Deputy Alexander Obolensky ran against Gorbachev as a sign that the practice of single-candidate elections should be done away with. Deputy Alexei Kazannik gave his mandate to Boris Yeltsin. The discussion between Boris Yeltsin and the “orthodox” Yegor Ligachev, proposals for a new Union Treaty, discussion of the past, and changes to the Constitution were the main topics of discussion. The battle between the old and the new in each of them was impassioned, and sometimes raged through the evening hours.

The congress adopted a resolution on the main directions of the domestic and foreign policy of the USSR and a proclamation to the peoples of the world, which reaffirmed a commitment to democratization of the country, pledged to open international dialogue instead of confrontation, and called for the renunciation of nuclear weapons.

On the final day of the congress, the democratic minority created the Interregional Deputies Group (the cochairs were Andrei Sakharov, Boris Yeltsin, Yuri Afanasyev, Gavriil Popov, and Victor Palm), which called for a radical reform of the country’s economic and political system. In the course of the subsequent congresses in 1989–91, the group won hard-fought battles for the passage of important decisions, including the repeal of the notorious Article 6 of the USSR Constitution that stated that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was the leading and guiding force of Soviet society, the condemnation of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the repeal of censorship, and a declaration of the freedom of the press and civil rights.

Five Congresses of People’s Deputies (1989–91) laid the foundation of a democratic political system and, just as importantly, the foundation of a democratic consciousness. In the fall of 1991, the congress voted to dissolve itself.

There was much that the deputies did not manage to do in that short period. The party nomenklatura, the bureaucracy that resisted renewal in the perestroika years, transformed and strengthened its positions in the era of market economics and shock therapy.

It makes it all the more important to recall the experience of the first Congress of People’s Deputies, the national desire for change, the experience of hope and the first steps of freedom and civil solidarity. The desire for dialogue with people from different countries free of confrontation. That dialogue did begin! Those who remember it believe that it will be revived.

“Thirteen days that changed the world” was the description given to the First Congress of People’s Deputies at a conference held at the Gorbachev Foundation in last month, attended by historians, analysts, and participants of the historic event that Andrei Sakharov called revolutionary.

Nor can we disagree with the words of the proclamation to the people of different countries, issued in June 1989: “We appeal to the world to fully develop the exchange of ideas and people, cultural and values, dialogue at all levels and in all spheres, to jointly seek and find mutually acceptable compromises for the sake of preserving peace on earth, for the prosperity and progress of all mankind.”

Back then, I believe most Russians believed that the Cold War and the arms race would be a thing of the past. And not only in Russia. Thirty-five years ago, perestroika, the most peaceful Russian revolution, acquired a legislative framework and involved millions of people in direct political participation, not as a faceless mass but as a sum of individuals imbued with voice and dignity. It has entered collective memory.