Glasnost (pronounced glaz-nost, glahz‐nost or glahs-nuhst (Russian))
Openness
in the context of politics.
1985 (English
adoption): A modern English borrowing from the Russian гла́сность (glásnost)
literally meaning “publicity” or “fact of being public” but usually translated
as “openness” or something in the vein of what is now referred to as
“transparency”. Although entering
English use in 1985, the word had been in the Russian language for centuries
and appears in the earliest Russian dictionaries. Glasnost is a noun, the adjectival forms are glasnostian
& glasnostic.
Among
Kremlinologists in the West, the word had been familiar since the Glasnost Rally, staged by the embryonic
Soviet civil rights movement in December 1965 and appeared in 1972 in reference
to a 1969 letter by dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The word is ultimately from the Old Church
Slavonic glasu (voice) from the
primitive Indo-European galso-, from the
root gal- (to call, shout). It was first used in a socio-political sense
by Lenin and popularized in English after Mikhail Gorbachev used it several
times in his speech in March 1985, accepting the post of General Secretary of
the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (USSR).
Perestroika (pronounced per-uh-stroi-kuh
or pyi-ryi-stroi-kuh (Russian))
Structural
economic reform.
1985
(English adoption): A modern English borrowing from the Russian Перестройка (perestróĭka) literally meaning “rebuilding”,
“reconstruction” or “reorganization” and gaining currency as an expression of
an intent by government to initiate structural economic reform. Perestroika
is a noun, the other noun (and adjectival) form being perestrokian. It also begat Salinastroika (a blend of Salinas- + -(peres)troika, which referred to the programme
of liberalization (which didn’t end well) under Carlos Salinas de
Gortari, President of Mexico (1988-1994).
Perestroika is an ancient Russian word but was
rare and in only technical use until the 1980s.
It was constructed from pere- (re-)
from Old Russian pere- (around, again)
from the Proto-Slavic per- from the
primitive Indo-European root per-
(forward) (hence "through, around, against”) + stroika (building, construction) from the Old Russian stroji (order) from the primitive
Indo-European stroi-, from the root stere- (to spread). Entering general use in English in 1985, in
the USSR, use in the now familiar context actually pre-dated the Gorbachev era,
being discussed during the twenty-sixth Party Congress in 1981.
Decline and fall, 1953-1991
After comrade Stalin's (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) death in 1953, the USSR entered a period of economic stagnation relative to the West, a situation not wholly understood at the time, disguised as it was by secrecy, Sputnik and the (often over-estimated) strength of the Soviet nuclear arsenal. After the decade-long, idiosyncratic rule of Comrade Khrushchev (1894–1971; Soviet leader 1953-1964) gave way to twenty years of increasingly geriatric government, in 1985, the relatively youthful comrade Gorbachev (1931–2022; Soviet leader 1985-1991) assumed the leadership. He announced to the party and the world that the USSR’s society and economy were in dire need of reform, the words he chose to describe the necessary processes were respectively glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring).
Glasnost under the gaze of comrade Lenin (1870–1924; head of government of Russia or the Soviet Union 1917-1924). One of the fruits of reform was that in 1988, the USSR staged its first ever government-approved beauty contest, the Miss Moscow title won by sixteen year-old Maria Kalinina (b 1971) who was later crowned Miss USSR.
Glasnost & perestroika captured imaginations in the West and comrade Gorbachev became something of a political rock star but while the reforms had profound geopolitical consequences, they weren’t what had been intended, the forces unleashed destabilizing the USSR and its satellite states. In 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall triggered a chain-reaction of political upheaval which saw the overthrow of the Moscow-aligned régimes of the Warsaw Pact and in 1991 the USSR was itself dissolved, ending both the cold war and an empire which had endured almost four decades after comrade Stalin’s death.
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