The leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics when perestroika began was Mikhail Gorbachev. He was the general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991, and the head of state of the Soviet Union from 1988 until its collapse in 1991. Perestroika, which means "restructuring", was a series of economic and political reforms instituted in the Soviet Union by Gorbachev in an effort to save the troubled Soviet system from collapse.