information about Soviet history, as well as current political, social,
and economic conditions, to modernize the Soviet Union and build
a political base. Glasnostbegan after the Chernobyl nuclear reactor
disaster in April 1986. The unwillingness of the Soviet bureaucracy
to inform the Soviet people of the scope of the disaster until 10 days
afterward convinced Gorbachev that radical change was necessary.
Critical to the campaign was a reexamination of the crimes of the
Stalinera. History was rewritten, some archives were opened, and
hundreds of thousands of the Stalin’s victims were rehabilitated.
Glasnostallowed Soviet citizens a much more honest—though
hardly complete—account of the past. It also led to demands for
greater freedoms, the establishment of an independent press, and a
full accounting of the crimes of the Stalin period. However, glasnost
also enraged the more reactionary members of the Communist Party,
who believed that Gorbachev’s policy would destroy the political au-
thority of the party and the KGB. Glasnost, in the opinion of many
historians, was indirectly responsible for the rise of Russian reformer
Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin and his supporters saw information as a key
weapon in the struggle for political power. They supported new jour-
nals such as Argumenty i Fakhti(Arguments and Facts), Literatur-
naya Gazeta(Literary Journal), and Ogonek(The Little Fire) that re-
searched the Soviet past and pushed the envelope in the debate on
Soviet politics.GLAVLIT. The “ideological KGB” of the Soviet system was Glavlit,an
acronym for Glavnoe upravlenie delam literatury i izdatv(Main Di-
rectorate of Literature and the Press). It was founded in 1922 with
a Chekaofficer as its vice director. By 1970 it had became the
regime’s chief censor with a staff of 70,000. Nothing could be re-
leased for publication without its imprimatur. Some Western special-
ists believe that at least one of Glavlit’s deputy chiefs was a KGB of-
ficial and that the KGB assisted in Glavlit’s annual compilation of its
Censor’s Index, a thick volume listing all military, technical, statisti-
cal, and other subjects that could not be publicized without specific
permission from the Central Committee of the Communist Party.
Another of Glavlit’s duties was to ensure that there were no mis-
takes or misprints in the party press. In the Stalin period, even mis-
prints could cost a printer or an editor his freedom. For example, they94 •GLAVLIT06-313 A-G.qxd 7/27/06 7:55 AM Page 94