<P> Gorbachev's interpretation of "glasnost" can best be summarized, translated, and explained in English as "openness". While associated with freedom of speech, the main goal of this policy was to make the country's management transparent, and circumvent the narrow circle of bureaucrats who previously exercised complete control of the economy . </P> <P> Soviet history under Stalin was re-examined; censored literature in the libraries was made more widely available; and there was a greater freedom of speech for citizens and openness in the media . This represented a radical and risky change for the Communist regime, as control of speech and suppression of criticism of the government had previously been a central part of the Soviet system . </P> <P> Under glasnost, the Soviet media began to expose social and economic problems which the authorities had long denied or covered up: poor housing, food shortages, alcoholism, widespread pollution, creeping mortality rates, the second - rate position of women, as well as the history of the Soviet State's crimes against the people . Nikita Khrushchev had denounced Stalin's personality cult in 1956, but he himself became a "non-person" in subsequent years and information about the true scale of the atrocities committed by Stalin, and Lenin, was suppressed until the late 1980s . </P> <P> Information about the higher quality of consumer goods and quality of life in the United States and Western Europe began to be transmitted to the Soviet population, along with western popular culture . </P>

Glasnost is a policy of political openness introduced into the soviet union in the late 1980s