Glasnost’ and the Soviet Press

In the two years after Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, there was much debate both in the West and in the Soviet Union about whether glasnost’ — variously translated as ‘openness’, ‘publicity’, ‘voicing opinions’ — was genuine and if it was, how far it would be allowed to go. In the third year, even some of the most sceptical analysts had begun to concede that the policy of glasnost’ had wrought profound change in the character of the Soviet media.1 The official press had been in the forefront of that change.