Question

1. What were the policies of perestroika and glasnost?

Answer 1

Perestroika and glasnost were the two central reform policies introduced by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev beginning in 1985 to try to revive the USSR.

Perestroika ("restructuring")
- Meaning/goal: Economic and, to a degree, political restructuring of the USSR to overcome stagnation, increase efficiency and productivity, and modernize the economy.
- Key measures:
- Greater autonomy for state enterprises (Law on State Enterprises, 1987) so managers could make production and pricing decisions.
- Legalization and encouragement of cooperatives and small private businesses (Law on Cooperatives, 1988) and allowance of some foreign joint ventures.
- Attempts to introduce market mechanisms, reduce centralized planning and bureaucratic controls.
- Political reforms tied to economic change (e.g., democratization of party and state institutions) intended to make governance more responsive.
- Intended effect: Create incentives, innovation and limited market activity while retaining socialism; avert economic collapse.
- Reality/outcome: Reforms were partial and inconsistent, often poorly implemented, and disrupted existing supply systems. Rather than stabilizing the system, perestroika contributed to shortages, inflation, corruption and economic decline in the late 1980s.

Glasnost ("openness" or "publicity")
- Meaning/goal: Increased openness, transparency and freedom of information in government, media and public life to reduce corruption, engage society in reform, and expose problems so they could be corrected.
- Key measures:
- Relaxation of censorship; newspapers, television and other media could investigate and criticize previously taboo subjects.
- Release of political prisoners and greater tolerance for dissenting voices and nonconformist cultural expression.
- Public discussion of Stalin-era crimes, government mistakes (Chernobyl secrecy is a notable catalyst), and social problems.
- Political liberalization such as competitive elections within the Communist Party and partly free elections to the new Congress of People’s Deputies (1989).
- Intended effect: Mobilize public support, improve governance through transparency and accountability.
- Reality/outcome: Glasnost unleashed public criticism and national grievances, empowered dissidents and nationalist movements in republics, weakened the Communist Party’s monopoly, and hastened political destabilization. It made the systemic failures of the USSR widely visible, accelerating calls for deeper change.

Combined impact
- Together, perestroika and glasnost aimed to reform and preserve the Soviet state, but their combination undermined centralized control: economic turmoil from perestroika and political liberalization from glasnost fed each other.
- They contributed to the rise of independent political movements in republics, loss of party authority, the 1991 coup attempt, and ultimately the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991.

In short: perestroika = restructure the economy and institutions; glasnost = open up society and government. Both were ambitious but incompletely executed reforms that unintentionally accelerated the USSR’s breakup.