Glasnost

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Glasnost (Russian: гла́сность, ) was one of Mikhail Gorbachev's policies introduced to the Soviet Union in 1985. The term is a Russian word for "publicity", "openness".

Contents

Objectives

Gorbachev's goal in undertaking glasnost was to pressure conservatives within the Party who opposed his policies of economic restructuring, or perestroika and also hoped that through different ranges of openness, debate and participation, the Soviet people would support and participate in perestroika.

Areas of concern

While in the West the notion of "glasnost" is associated with freedom of speech, the main goal of this policy was to make the country's management transparent and open to debate, to change the former situation when major political and management decisions were made by a narrow circle of apparatchiks or within the Politburo and were beyond criticism. Through reviewing the past or current mistakes being made, it was hoped that the Soviet people would back reforms such as perestroika.

Glasnost gave new freedoms to the people, such as a greater freedom of speech — a radical change, as control of speech and suppression of government criticism had previously been a central part of the Soviet system. There was also a greater degree of freedom within the media. In the late 1980's, the Soviet government came under increased criticism, as did Leninist ideology (which Gorbachev had attempted to preserve as the foundation for reform), and members of the Soviet population were more outspoken in their view that the Soviet government had become a failure. Glasnost did indeed provide freedom of expression, far beyond what Gorbachev had intended, and changed citizens' view towards the government, which finally led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Glasnost and democratisation

Glasnost was considered a step towards real democracy in Russia. The press became far less controlled, to such an extent that the official Komsomol newspaper (Komsomolskaya Pravda) was banned in Czechoslovakia following the introduction of glasnost.

Effects

Relaxation of censorship resulted in the Communist Party losing its grip on the media. Before long, much to the embarrassment of the authorities, the media began to expose severe social and economic problems which the Soviet government had long denied and covered up. Long-denied problems such as poor housing, food shortages, alcoholism, widespread pollution, creeping mortality rates and the second-rate position of women, were now receiving increasing attention. Moreover, under glasnost, the people were able to learn significantly more about the horrors committed by the government when Joseph Stalin was in power. Although Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin's personality cult, information about the true proportions of his atrocities was still suppressed. In all, the very positive view of Soviet life which had long been presented to the public by the official media was being rapidly dismantled, and the negative aspects of life in the Soviet Union were brought into the spotlight. This began to undermine the faith of the public in the Soviet system.

Political openness continued to produce unintended consequenses. In elections to the regional assemblies of the Soviet Union's constituent republics, nationalists swept the board. As Gorbachev had weakened the system of internal political repression, the ability of the USSR's central Moscow government to impose its will on the USSR's constituent republics had been largely undermined. During the 1980s calls for greater independence from Moscow's rule grew louder. This was especially marked in the Baltic Republics of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, which had been annexed into the Soviet Union by Joseph Stalin in 1940. Nationalist feeling also took hold in other Soviet republics such as Ukraine, Georgia and Azerbaijan.

Starting in the mid-1980s, the Baltic states used the reforms provided by glasnost to assert their rights to protect their environment and their historic monuments and, later, their claims to sovereignty and independence. When the Balts withstood outside threats, they exposed an irresolute Kremlin. Bolstering separatism in other Soviet republics, the Balts triggered multiple challenges to the Soviet Empire. Supported by Russian leader Boris Yeltsin, the Baltic republics asserted their sovereignty.

The rise of nationalism under glasnost also reawakened simmering ethnic tensions throughout the union. For example, in February 1988, Nagorno-Karabakh, a predominantly ethnic Armenian region in the Azerbaijan SSR, passed a resolution calling for unification with the Armenian SSR. Violence against local Azeris was then reported on Soviet television, which provoked massacres of Armenians in the Azerbaijani city of Sumgait.

Whilst thousands of political prisoners and many dissidents were released in the spirit of glasnost, Gorbachev's original goal of using glasnost and perestroika to reform the Soviet Union was not achieved. In 1991, the Soviet Union was dissolved following a failed coup by conservative elements who were opposed to Gorbachev's reforms.

See also

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