Gorbachev and glasnost: how his fragile legacy of free speech has been destroyed by Putin

Jennifer Mathers, Aberystwyth University Mikhail Gorbachev was only Soviet leader for a little over six years, from 1985 to 1991, but they were six years that changed both his country and the world. His policies of perestroika (reconstruction) and glasnost (openness) gave ordinary citizens the opportunity to exercise real political freedoms, including freedom