Glasnost
Glasnost was a policy that called for increased openness and transparency in government institutions and activities in theSoviet Union. Introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the second half of the 1980s. The word was frequently used by Gorbachev to specify the policies he believed might help reduce the corruption at the top of the Communist Party and the Soviet government, and moderate the abuse of administrative power in the Central Committee. Russian human rights activist and dissident Lyudmila Alexeyeva explained glasnost as a word that "had been in the Russian language for centuries. It was in the dictionaries and lawbooks as long as there had been dictionaries and lawbooks. It was an ordinary, hardworking, nondescript word that was used to refer to a process, any process of justice of governance, being conducted in the open."Glasnost can also refer to the specific period in the history of the USSR during the 1980s when there was less censorship and greater freedom of information.
perestroika
Perestroika was a political movement for reformation within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during the 1980s (1986), widely associated with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his glasnost (meaning "openness") policy reform. The literal meaning of perestroika is "restructuring", referring to the restructuring of the Soviet political and economic system. Perestroika is often argued to be the cause of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the revolutions of 1989 in Eastern Europe, and the end of the Cold War.Perestroika allowed more independent actions from various ministries and introduced some market-like reforms. The goal of the perestroika, however, was not to end the command economy but rather to make socialism work more efficiently to better meet the needs of Soviet consumers.The process of implementing perestroika arguably exacerbated already existing political, social and economic tensions within the Soviet Union and no doubt helped to further nationalism in the constituent republics. Perestroika and resistance to it are often cited as major catalysts leading to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Although perestroika did, in fact, cause social unrest, it also gave the Soviet Union a new direction of foreign policy that led to achieving greater political power than ever before. Gorbachev changed the meaning of freedom for the people of the USSR.