The first and only president of the former USSR Mikhail Gorbachev has responded to allegations that he and the others didn’t have a plan when they were launching the perestroika and says even though there was no and couldn’t have been a “specific train schedule”, they knew which way to go, reports RIA Novosti.

It was exactly 35 years ago this Thursday when the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union held its plenarium in April, and this day is considered the day perestroika began. A short while after the plenarium, Gorbachev, who had become the General Secretary of the Communist Party, declared the course of perestroika and acceleration and is often referred to as the “father” of perestroika.