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Glasnost: A Fundamental Reform
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12631 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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6 / 1987 |
2,214 Words |
| Author
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Jerry F. Hough
Jerry F. Hough is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution
and professor of political science at Duke University. |
The word glasnost has come into the American vocabulary just as the word sputnik did three decades ago - and for the same reason. It expresses a phenomenon that really isn't covered by any existing English word.
Glasnost implies openness, a relaxation in censorship, but not a legally protected right to publish anything. Already it has meant information about Chernobyl, a Soviet press conference with Margaret Thatcher, and articles in the Soviet national press by Edward Teller, Sen. Robert Dole, and Rep. Les Aspin (defending SDI, the end of SALT II, and rockets in Europe, respectively). Clearly, in 1987 it will mean a freer discussion of Stalin and the revolution of 1917, although not a free discussion.
Glasnost, despite its limitations, should not be seen as something that is temporary and tactical. It represents a change in party strategy rather than party tactics, and it reflects deep-seated political needs of the leadership.
Only sophisticated interpretations of what is going on will allow us to understand the situation. Certainly, it would be wrong to believe that the publication of accurate information and criticism of policy is being legitimated for the first time under Gorbachev. Stalin himself showed an acute awareness of the central paradox of censorship: Censorship that is designed to strengthen the control of a dictator can weaken his real control by preventing him from obtaining the information that he needs to rule. Stalin's answer to this problem was to establish norms of "criticism" and "self-criticism" and to institute a number of channels through which these could flow.
In 1950, one of the Western scholars who developed the totalitarian model for interpreting the Soviet Union, Alex Inkeles, made the generalization, "In the United States one can criticize the president freely, but little else. In the Soviet Union one cannot criticize Stalin at all, but one can criticize everything else." Inkeles said this was somewhat of an exaggeration, but not entirely.
The information available in the Soviet press under Stalin dealt with the bureaucratic apparatus - the local government, plant and farm management, store and school administrators. Using material published in Soviet newspapers, Westerners could - and did - write solid books about the operations of the Soviet administrative system that their Soviet colleagues could not write about the U.S. system from material in the New York
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