At a rally in Moscow, Yeltsin argued that Article 6 of the Soviet constitution, guaranteeing Communist Party supremacy, should be abolished to allow genuine multiparty politics. His stance, radical for a senior official, reflected the accelerating collapse of one-party rule across the Eastern Bloc.
By early 1990, the Berlin Wall had already fallen and Communist governments across Eastern Europe were toppling in rapid succession. Yeltsin, then a maverick reformist politician who had clashed repeatedly with Gorbachev, sensed the moment and pushed further than the Soviet leadership was prepared to go.
Speaking to a large crowd in Moscow, Yeltsin demanded the repeal of the constitutional clause enshrining the Communist Party's leading role, a position that just a few years earlier would have been unthinkable for anyone within the political establishment. His willingness to say aloud what many suspected accelerated pressure on Gorbachev.
Within weeks, the Congress of People's Deputies did vote to strike Article 6, formally ending the party's legal monopoly. Yeltsin's gamble on public radicalism paid off personally too: within two years he would be president of an independent Russia, presiding over the Soviet Union's final dissolution.