Question

What were perestroika and glasnost and how did they interact with each other?

Answer 1

Those were two were policies made by Mikhail Gorbachev. It is important because they directly lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev realised that economy was struggling, and its citizens were chafing under their relatively poor standard of living and lack of freedom.

To address these concerns, Gorbachev introduced a reform program with two new concepts. Perestroika, his restructuring concept, started with an overhaul of the top members of the Communist Party. It also focused on economic issues, replacing the centralized government planning that had been a hallmark of the Soviet system with a greater reliance on market forces. The accompanying concept of glasnost sought to ease the strict social controls imposed by the government. Gorbachev gave greater freedom to the media and religious groups and allowed citizens to express divergent views.

Glasnost was a policy meaning "openness" and Perestroika meant "reconstruction". Gorbachev realised that Soviet Union's economy was stagnating and was not performing well. Hence he brought in some new policies to change it. He allowed a drastic change in freedom of press that allowed media to talk about the problems facing the Soviet Union and the widespread abuses of the system.

Perestroika was initally welcomed but the problem with the transition like this is that it takes time, and the Soviet people, having put up with these flaws for the last few decades, were not very patient. Perestroika did not produce a large enough increase in the production of consumer goods, nor did it improve standards of living by enough. The poor performance of this transitional economy invited dissent by conservatives who wanted a return to the communist model and liberals who wanted to move even further from communism.

With implementation of Glasnost, Gorbachev either failed to predict or control for was that allowing such openness led to criticism of the Soviet Union and the Communist model itself. Previously suppressed ideas regarding capitalism and the West were now in the open, and the Soviet system became to come under attack from domestic forces.

The collapse of the Soviet Union can effectively be traced back to Soviet leader Gorbachev’s failed policies of domestic economic and political reform: perestroika and glasnost.