Glasnost

On 5 December 1965 the Glasnost rally took place in Moscow, considered to be a key event in the emergence of the Soviet civil rights movement. Protesters on Pushkin Square led by Alexander Yesenin-Volpin demanded access to the closed trial of Yuly Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky. The protestors made specific requests for "glasnost", herein referring to the specific admission of the public, independent observers and foreign journalists, to the trial that had been legislated in the then newly issued Code of Criminal Procedure. With a few specified exceptions, Article 111 of the Code stated that judicial hearings in the USSR should be held in public.

Such protests against closed trials continued throughout the post-Stalin era. Andrei Sakharov, for example, did not travel to Oslo to receive his Nobel Peace Prize due to his public protest outside a Vilnius court building demanding access to the 1976 trial of Sergei Kovalev, an editor of the Chronicle of Current Events and prominent rights activist.[3]

In 1986, Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and his advisers adopted glasnost as a political slogan, together with the term perestroika. Alexander Yakovlev, Head of the Propaganda Department of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, is considered to be the intellectual force behind Gorbachev's reform program.[4]

Glasnost was taken to mean increased openness and transparency in government institutions and activities in the Soviet Union (USSR).[5] Glasnost reflected a commitment of the Gorbachev administration to allowing Soviet citizens to discuss publicly the problems of their system and potential solutions.[6] Gorbachev encouraged popular scrutiny and criticism of leaders, as well as a certain level of exposure by the mass media.[7]

Some critics, especially among legal reformers and dissidents, regarded the Soviet authorities' new slogans as vague and limited alternatives to more basic liberties. Alexei Simonov, president of the Glasnost Defence Foundation, makes a critical definition of the term in suggesting it was "a tortoise crawling towards Freedom of Speech".[8]

Between 1986 and 1991, during an era of reforms in the USSR, glasnost was frequently linked with other generalised concepts such as perestroika (literally: restructuring or regrouping) and demokratizatsiya (democratisation). Gorbachev often appealed to glasnost when promoting policies aimed at reducing corruption at the top of the Communist Party and the Soviet government, and moderating the abuse of administrative power in the Central Committee. The ambiguity of "glasnost" defines the distinctive five-year period (1986–1991) at the end of the USSR's existence. There was decreasing pre-publication and pre-broadcast censorship and greater freedom of information.

The "Era of Glasnost" saw greater contact between Soviet citizens and the Western world, particularly the United States: restrictions on travel were loosened for many Soviet citizens which further eased pressures on international exchange between the Soviet Union and the West.[9]

Gorbachev's interpretation of "glasnost" can best be summarised in English as "openness". While associated with freedom of speech, the main goal of this policy was to make the country's management transparent, and circumvent the holding of near-complete control of the economy and bureaucracy of the Soviet Union by a concentrated body of officials and bureaucratic personnel.

During Glasnost, Soviet history under Stalin was re-examined; censored literature in the libraries was made more widely available;[10][11] and there was a greater freedom of speech for citizens and openness in the media. It was in the late 1980s when most people in the Soviet Union began to learn about the atrocities of Stalin, and learned about previously suppressed events.

Information about the supposedly higher quality of consumer goods and quality of life in the United States and Western Europe began to be transmitted to the Soviet population,[12] along with western popular culture.[13]

Glasnost and similar reforms were applied in the following communist states:

• Bulgaria[14]
• Czechoslovakia
• East Germany[15]
• Hungary[16]
• Mongolia[17]
• Poland[18]
• Vietnam (see đổi mới)[19]

Furthermore, in the socialist state of Yugoslavia, similar reforms also existed, with the first major reforms beginning in Slovenia.[20]

Glasnost or similar reforms were not applied in the following communist states:

• China (had its own non-Soviet-inspired reforms)[21][22]
• Cuba
• Laos
• North Korea[19]
• Romania (opposed by Nicolae Ceaușescu)[23]