The Glasnost Gambit: The Baltic Road from Soviet Silence to Sovereignty

In 1992, reflecting on the tumultuous journey of the Soviet Union between 1985 to 1991, the last General Secretary of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev declared, “We embarked on a path of major changes which may turn out to be the most significant in the twentieth century, for our country and for its peoples. But we also did this for the entire world.” Gorbachev’s words were a marker for one of the most significant moments in world history: the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent end of the Cold War.  

Just seven years before Gorbachev’s reflection, the flag of the Soviet Union flew high over the Kremlin; the nation encompassed nearly one-sixth of the Earth’s land surface; its borders stretched across eleven time zones. With an atmosphere permeated by fear and repression, the Soviet Union appeared as a goliath of a nation that seemed unbreakable. But something cracked the silence. Across the fifteen Soviet republics, murmurs from previously silenced voices began to echo. These whispers quickly turned into screams. A journalist in Moscow published a story about Stalin’s crimes; families in Riga began to hum old songs in Latvian; a crowd in Tallinn gathered to put an end to the Kremlin’s ruthless threats. The empire began to crack: by the end of 1991, the flag of the Soviet Union had come down from the Kremlin for the last time. And the fifty-year Cold War which had shaped nearly every corner of the globe had finally ended. 

Once tightly woven together under fear and control, the threads of the Soviet Union began to unravel from within. Behind the vast proliferation of anti-Stalin newspaper articles, traditional Latvian tunes, and protests lay a dramatic shift in policy spearheaded by the final General Secretary of the Soviet Union: Mikhail Gorbachev. 

In 1985, Gorbachev launched a sweeping reform initiative called perestroika, which aimed to revitalize the stagnant Soviet economy. Defined as “reconstruction” or “restructuring”, perestroika initially served as a euphemism for reform, but later became an overarching term for the systemic transformations that Gorbachev would implement throughout the Soviet Union. Among the many revolutionary ideas within perestroika was glasnost, which was translated as “openness”, “transparency”, or “publicity”. Glasnost advocated for more openness in political discourse and increased transparency within the bureaucracy, which created an environment increasingly conducive to civil society movements. This transformation by glasnost was most evident in the Baltic Republics, where glasnost empowered people to challenge Moscow’s authority. These informal protestations to authority gradually evolved into the Popular Fronts, which were Baltic civil society movements that advocated for greater autonomy and which contributed to the eventual disintegration of the Soviet Union. 

However, historians diverge on the extent to which glasnost catalyzed the Popular Fronts’ rise to prominence. Mark Beissinger argues that glasnost was the main enabler of the Popular Fronts by creating the political space necessary for nationalist mobilization. Beissinger asserts that without glasnost, the social forces that brought the collapse of communism would not have materialized or been able to act. Glasnost reduced state censorship that had prevented nationalist expression, which is why it allowed for previously suppressed national grievances to surface. Beissinger argues that glasnost’s role in enabling the Popular Fronts is evidence of its transformative power and success, even if it resulted in unintended consequences. 

On the other hand, historian David Marples downplays the role of glasnost in the rise of the Popular Fronts. While glasnost may have allowed for frustrations to surface, Marples argues that factors like economic decline, the Afghanistan War, and long-term nationalist sentiment were the main drivers behind the Popular Fronts and the subsequent collapse of the USSR. The weakening Soviet economy eroded public trust in the government; the Afghan War drained resources and in turn weakened public confidence. Finally, nationalist grievances in the Baltic States preceded glasnost and were only amplified by the policy as opposed to being sparked solely by it. 

While Beissinger focuses on increased mobilization from glasnost and Marples on the structural factors that gave rise to the Popular Fronts, historian Anthony D’Agostino argues that glasnost empowered the Popular Fronts by promoting ideological reassessment of the founding tenets of the Soviet Union. D’Agostino argues that glasnost resulted in a proliferation of radical critiques against Stalinism and Leninism in Soviet newspapers such as Ogonyok. In doing so, it resulted in a “moral collapse” among the Soviet intelligentsia which undermined the regime’s ideological foundation. Glasnost eroded the Soviet Union’s identity as an “ideocracy”, or a regime crucially dependent on an official ideological consensus, which caused widespread loss of faith in the government. This ideological crisis made the Baltic populace question the legitimacy of Soviet rule, which amplified nationalist sentiments that fueled the rise of the Popular Fronts. 

This paper argues that while Gorbachev initiated glasnost to garner support for restructuring the Soviet economy, glasnost inadvertently fueled the empowerment of the Popular Fronts in the Baltic States by providing the political aperture necessary for these movements to organize. The Baltics’ prior independence and strong national identities were the reasons why they led the way in pushing for independence from the Soviet Union. Ultimately, these movements challenged the legitimacy of Soviet rule in the Baltics, which contradicted Gorbachev’s initial goals of revitalizing the economy and strengthening the legitimacy of the Soviet government. These uprisings were a flashpoint that brought a close to the fifty-year Cold War that had permeated every corner of global politics.

Section I. The Development of Gorbachev’s Idea of Glasnost 

Gorbachev used glasnost as a tool within perestroika to encourage open dialogue to build support for his economic reforms. Because the idea of openness may seem incompatible or iconoclastic with the ideological rigidity present in the Soviet Union, it is key to understand the conceptual evolution of glasnost. There were three fateful events in Gorbachev’s upbringing that influenced the creation of this policy. 

The first was the arrest of both of Gorbachev’s grandfathers. Andrei, his paternal grandfather, was arrested in 1934 for refusing to participate in Stalin’s collectivization campaign and was accused of being a “saboteur”. Similarly, Gopkalo, his maternal grandfather, was arrested in 1937, when Gorbachev was six years old. A victim of Stalin’s purges, Gopkalo was charged with being a member of a “counterrevolutionary, right-wing Trot-skyite organization”, and was tortured in order to extract a confession. There was no credible evidence that Gopkalo committed any crime; this demonstrated the unjust nature of Stalin’s purges because even the most loyal could be deposed. 

A seminal inflection point in his life, Gorbachev described the arrest as the “first upheaval in my life”; for this reason, the event was “ingrained [...] forever in [his] memory.” Following Gopkalo’s arrest, Gorbachev’s family was shunned by neighbors; their relatives only secretly visited at night because “enemies of the people” were ostracized. While the arrest of his grandfather did not immediately radicalize Gorbachev’s views, it made him aware of the cruelty and repression present in the Soviet Union. As such, he believed government accountability was crucial to rebuild trust between the people and the state, which glasnost later aimed to foster.  

The second pivotal event was Gorbachev’s university experience, where he described teaching amounting to ideological drill. He stated, “the learning process was designed to put shackles on the young spirit, to inculcate in the young heads a set of in-alienable truth and to save them from the temptation of reasoning indepen-dently, [...]. The iron brackets of ideology, [...] were always felt.”  Gorbachev’s description of the Soviet educational system as “shackles on the young spirit” demonstrates his disillusionment with the system as a tool of ideological conditioning as opposed to spurring free and open thought. Glasnost aimed to dismantle these chains that stifled esprit. 

The third source of influence for glasnost was the time Gorbachev spent in Western nations (Italy in 1971, Belgium in 1972, West Germany in 1975, France in 1976, Canada in 1983, and Britain in 1984). Gorbachev was able to make these trips abroad because he was trusted by the state. On these trips, Gorbachev was not yet the General Secretary of the Soviet Union, allowing him to engage in the local cultures in a manner that few other Soviet leaders had done. Gorbachev was exposed to completely different political systems, and was most surprised by the openness of Western society and the huge discrepancies in the quality of life. This distortion resulted in a realization that Soviet propaganda had painted a skewed picture of life under capitalism. He writes, “Irrespective of their purpose, the visits were instructive for me [...] because [they underlined] the fact that the information we received from abroad was meager and also carefully filtered.” 

This exposure to the West launched Gorbachev into a cycle of candid introspection. Gorbachev recognized the disparities in the quality of life, writing that “perhaps the most important thing which I brought back with me from my trips abroad was the realization that people there live in better conditions and have a higher standard of living [than in the Soviet Union]. Why do we live worse than the other developed countries?” This question was a driving force behind Gorbachev’s push for change and subsequent perestroika and glasnost reforms. In doing so, Gorbachev articulated that the Soviet Union’s “aged leaders were not especially worried about our undeniably lower living standards, our unsatisfactory way of life, and our falling behind in the field of advanced technologies.” His exposure to Western countries made him realize the issues pervading the Soviet Union, inspiring the need for reforms. 

However, perestroika was more greatly influenced by the economic conditions at the time than Gorbachev’s personal experience. The vigorous Soviet economy of the late-1960s and early 1970s quickly fell victim to the factor that had contributed to its success: central planning. The Soviet economy reached a stage of stagnation marked by declines in growth rates, labor productivity, and return on capital investment. Economic growth in the USSR by 1985 was in decline, falling to less than half their 1970 levels—there was a drop in the annual growth rate from 7.5% in 1966-70 to 2.5% since 1981. To investigate why the Soviet economy was in decline, Gorbachev commissioned a study known as the Novosibirsk Report, which argued that the Soviet Union’s stagnant economy stemmed from entrenched structural flaws. The report questioned the fundamental precepts of Soviet centralized planning, arguing that the five-decades old system of state management had become “incredibly entangled and outdated”, no longer suited to the demands of the modern economy. The system of state planning prioritized the performance of the obedient over those of more talented workers, stifling growth because the system rewarded conformity over productivity and innovation. As a result, the Soviet system failed to “make provision for the [...] sufficiently effective use of the labor potential and intellectual resources of society.” To fix these structural issues, the Novosibirsk Report argued that there needed to be a “profound restructuring of the state economic system”, which would be achieved by “abandoning administrative methods of management with a high degree of centralized decision making.” 

The declining Soviet economy, coupled with the death of Leonid Brezhnev in 1982 triggered a juncture for Soviet leadership as they grappled with determining the future direction of the Soviet Union. The Politburo chose Yuri Andropov as Brezhnev’s successor, who began to expose the issues in the Soviet Union through anti-corruption campaigns. However, Andropov’s death in 1984 made the Politburo choose a new leader—Konstanin Chernenko. Chernenko’s ineffective leadership only exacerbated the economic and bureaucratic issues present in the Soviet Union. After Chernenko’s death in 1985, the Politburo chose to elect Mikhail Gorbachev (the Politburo’s youngest member) as the next General Secretary because the country needed a dynamic, younger leader to address the nation’s challenges. Vladimir Dolgikh, a Politburo member, confirmed his support of Gorbachev’s election as the General Secretary, stating, “We are all united, in the opinion that Gorbachev not only has great experience in the past, but he also has a future. Today, our country needs an energetic leader who would be capable of going deeply into the substance of problems, a leader who is sincere, courageous, and demanding.”

Dolgikh perfectly epitomized what the Soviet Union got from Gorbachev. As he took his position as the General Secretary of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev realized that Soviet society had to be reinvigorated with fresh ways of doing things, under the governance of the Communist Party. Consequently, perestroika would become Gorbachev’s platform to revitalize the stagnant bureaucracy and economy. While the initial focus of perestroika was on economic reforms, Gorbachev expanded its scope through introducing new tools to build support for his reform agenda. One of these tools was glasnost: Gorbachev realized previous attempts at reform had failed due to bureaucratic resistance which is why glasnost was introduced as a political tool to push change. Glasnost was the strategic bet he needed for the government and populace to catalyze each other to change and mutually adopt perestroika. The goals of glasnost were three-fold: to stimulate bottom-up momentum for economic reform, to increase bureaucratic accountability, and to foster public trust.  

The first goal of glasnost was to stimulate bottom up momentum for economic reform through increased civic participation. Defining glasnost as the “freedom to express views that reflect different interests”, Gorbachev aimed to generate populist pressure for the revitalization of the economy. Glasnost offered a platform where citizens—especially those disillusioned with economic stagnation—could voice their frustrations, which would increase public support for revitalizing the economy. Moreover, Gorbachev linked such expression to productivity reform, arguing that “broad, timely and frank information is testimony to trust in people [which] raises the activeness of the toilers.” As the Soviet populace became more informed and felt trusted by the state, they would be motivated to participate in reform efforts, increasing their productivity and commitment to economic revitalization. 

The second goal of glasnost was fostering stronger accountability of bureaucratic processes. Prior to glasnost, government decision making was opaque and occurred behind closed doors with little input from the public. As a result, incompetence and corruption were rampant in the Politburo because the public could not criticize officials. This lack of openness in Soviet society was seen as protecting “incompetence and irresponsibility.” However, glasnost upended this system by serving as an “effective means of struggle against bureaucratic distortions.” By holding officials subject to public scrutiny through glasnost, party officials would be incentivized to perform better in their respective positions, allowing them to more effectively govern the country and revitalize its economy. 

The third goal of glasnost was fostering public trust between the government and the proletariat. Gorbachev intended for the implementation of glasnost to be the transparent disclosure of information by the state. By being more open and honest about the USSR’s past, Gorbachev used glasnost as a means of making the Communist Party seem more legitimate, trustworthy, and connected to the people. In turn, Soviet citizens would be more likely to believe in and follow his political and economic lead. As historian Lapidus explains, glasnost was a calculated expansion of public discourse to acknowledge past failures as a means of legitimizing future reforms. 

As much as Gorbachev sought these democratic reforms, he was a loyal Communist and did not intend to dismantle the tenets of the Communist state. Instead, he sought controlled reforms and measured liberalizing change within the nation. As such, Gorbachev aimed to keep glasnost and freedom of speech within manageable limits, but it quickly exceeded those boundaries. In his endeavor of glasnost, Gorbachev did not act alone: he had the backing of the Politburo and many prominent reformist members including Alexander Yakovlev, Edward Shevardnadze, and Vadim Mededev. All of these members were frustrated by the economic and social stagnation of the Brezhnev years; as such, they believed in glasnost as a mechanism to overcome bureaucratic stagnation. This heavy backing from numerous Politburo advisors allowed for glasnost to open the door to an intensifying public debate that challenged the very legitimacy of the Soviet order itself. 

Section II: Implementation of Glasnost and the Start of Its Unintended Consequences 

Before glasnost, the Soviet regime only allowed the Communist Party hierarchy to voice opinions through state-controlled media. Glasnost marked a transformation to this system: Gorbachev intended for glasnost to encourage open discussion of economic inefficiencies and bureaucratic corruption. He initially restricted discussion of Stalin’s past because he feared it would result in public disillusionment which would distract from his reforms. 

Starkly, there were three unexpected and fateful events that resulted in more liberalization from glasnost: the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear plant, the January 1987 Plenum, and the 70th Anniversary of the October Revolution. In each of these events, state imposed constraints on glasnost backfired because of the public’s thirst for more freedom; the government faced significant pressure to reveal more information. As such, the state could not selectively manage its narrative. Even though Gorbachev tried to keep glasnost in controlled bounds, leaders were unable to contain the dormant fury roused by it. 

The first event was the Chernobyl explosion on April 26, 1986. The Soviet government initially tried to cover up the full scale of the explosion of the nuclear plant, in line with its traditional culture of secrecy. However, the story of Chernobyl was impossible for Moscow to contain as a result of Western monitoring technology and media. On April 27th, unmanned detectors in Sweden registered radioactive fallout coming from the Soviet Union; Western commercial satellites provided acute imagery of the disaster as early as April 28th. This rapid Western detection and news reportage made the talk of glasnost ring hollow. Western reports soon reached Soviet citizens through shortwave radio, which demonstrated the government’s lack of transparency in the face of the crisis. To enhance his credibility as a champion of government honesty, Gorbachev decided to expand the flow of information about Chernobyl. By May 10th, the media was allowed on scene to produce reports, which was a shift towards greater openness. While these actions intended to increase transparency, it opened the door to increased public criticism against the Soviet government. Chernobyl demonstrated the clandestine culture within the regime, which coalesced public discourse to push for increased government transparency in the face of public health crises. Indeed, Gorbachev was forced to leverage the Chernobyl incident as a means to expand the perimeter of glasnost. In his televised speech to the nation on May 14th, Gorbachev declared that the Chernobyl incident proved that the Soviet system needed restructuring—which historian Elliot describes as “a politically adroit seizure of victory from the clutches of disaster.”

Perhaps the most significant development and wholesale departure of glasnost was the January 1987 plenum. By 1987, Gorbachev realized that economic reforms were unable to address the Soviet Union’s economic stagnation; there needed to be structural political and ideological changes to accelerate the requisite restructuring. With a high level goal of democratization, the plenum took the firm decision to move towards contested elections and the creation of a new legislature to replace the existing Supreme Soviet. At this plenary session, Gorbachev gave the most far-reaching critique of Soviet theory. Gorbachev argued that political thinking had been “largely fixed at the level of the 1930s-40s [when] vigorous debates and creative ideas disappeared [...] while authoritarian evaluations and opinions became unquestionable truths.” After saying that the society and system were only at the initial stage of perestroika, he declared that “Perestroika itself is possible only through democracy and due to democracy. It is only in this way that it is possible to give scope to socialism’s most powerful creative force—free labour and free thought in a free country.” The plenum effectively opened up public discussion to every essential Marxist postulate, including collectivization, central planning, and party monopolization of cadre appointments. As such, the government signaled that they were willing to confront past mistakes and allow a broader range of viewpoints, which ominously opened the door to challenging the traditional Marxist-Leninist doctrine. As a result, radical statements circulated including Nikolai Shmelev’s essay on the bankruptcy of central planning, rapid growth of pressure for rehabilitating Stalin’s Old Bolshevik victims, and profusion of harsh attacks on water projects in many publications including Ogonyok, Novyi Mir, and Kommunist. While Gorbachev intended for glasnost as a tool for democratization within the framework of socialism, the people countered with a growing willingness to challenge the Communist Party. This set the stage for a proliferation of radical ideas that would soon challenge the Party’s authority and destabilize the Soviet Union, as opposed to revitalizing the nation. 

The spread of these unprecedented demands was further exacerbated by the 70th Anniversary of the October Revolution. As this event approached in 1987, Gorbachev recognized the need for glasnost in historical discussions. In a reversal of his earlier restraint, Gorbachev boldly took the gambit of arguing that history and literature should not have “forgotten names or blanks,” emphasizing that those who made the revolution should not be forgotten. In a speech about the October Revolution, Gorbachev tried to strike a compromise between radical calls for the rehabilitation of Bolsheviks repressed by Stalin and tributes to his wise leadership—a balance of the positive and negative aspects of Stalin’s rule. However, one of the most striking radical calls made was Gorbachev’s proclamation that Stalin’s repressions were “immense and unpardonable” and should serve as a lesson for “all generations.” Gorbachev initiated a new radical review of Soviet history that ultimately made people question the system that they so blindly followed for years. Speaking for many of his compatriots, an unnamed dumbfounded Russian citizen stated, “How could it happen that until I was thirty years old I had been living in comfortable ignorance that the entire post-October history of my people was mixed with blood, crime and lies? That the people whom I believed, whose portraits were encouragingly looking at me from the pages of school textbooks, whom I worshipped and considered to be disinterested fighters for the radiant future, turned out to be either criminals or maniacs. The system managed to turn me into an idiotic true believer.”

Glasnost became the fuel that ignited the chain reaction of the aforementioned three factors that undermined Communist Party authority, which in turn led to the eventual collapse of the USSR. Like any fire, where Gorbachev failed was preventing the spontaneous combustion caused by glasnost. Gorbachev should have launched what authoritarian regimes with great precedent do best: crack down. Two relatively recent precedents would have been instructive for Gorbachev to heed. In China in 1956, Mao instated the Hundred Flowers Campaign, allowing criticism of the CCP to improve governance and promoting intellectual freedom. The campaign backfired when widespread dissent began to proliferate, which resulted in Mao cracking down on dissent and codifying a political purge through the Anti-Rightist Campaign. Similarly, in Czechoslovakia’s Prague Spring reforms of 1968, the Czech government aimed to include greater freedoms of speech and political choice. Brezhnev saw these liberalization efforts of the Prague Spring as a threat to Soviet unity, which is why he instated a three-month détente period of reconnaissance, surveillance, and increased political pressure on the government to suppress the reforms. When the Prague Spring continued to grow in power, Brezhnev met with other Soviet nations on July 14, 1968 to authorize military intervention. On August 20, 1968, 200,000 Soviet troops were sent into Czechoslovakia to occupy the territory and suppress the Prague Spring. Immediately after the invasion, all reforms were repealed. In doing so, the government reasserted Soviet control and silenced dissent. In both the cases of the Hundred Flowers and the Prague Spring, there was a crackdown on freedom of speech when it began to threaten the political standing of the incumbent government. Crackdowns resulted in the restoration of the government’s political power. However, Gorbachev was hesitant to crack down because of his ideological commitment to glasnost—he believed that a crackdown went against its founding tenets of promoting freedom and open discourse. This is how glasnost became the fuel that ignited the thirst for freedom and autonomy in the Baltic States. 

Because of Gorbachev’s lack of an early crackdown on glasnost, critiques against the Soviet Union began to proliferate. Journalists began to openly challenge the precepts of Marxism; freedom of the press exponentially surged. Vitali Korotich, a leading editor of the Soviet newspaper Ogonyok, perfectly encapsulated the revolution from glasnost, writing that “We are learning to say out loud words we were afraid to voice for decades. In the past it was difficult for Ogonyok to decide to publish just a one-sentence reference to the need for public control over the Soviet military and the KGB. Now we publish everything that we can vouch for, which is how it should be.” By the end of 1989, there were over 300 democratic publications in the Soviet Union. Glasnost allowed previously suppressed political forces to gain public attention, leading to increased independent associational activity. Journalists put dissident and opposition voices into the public spotlight which resonated with a public that was hungry for truth. This newfound openness eroded decades of Soviet secrecy and iron-fisted governance. Korotich concludes, “The machine that used to subjugate by crushing rather than persuading is worn out. [...] This fear is fading, and the nation is slowly coming back to life”.

Section III: Glasnost and the Baltic States  

The Baltic Republics (Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia) were the first Soviet republics to embrace the open political forum that glasnost created. This was because of their prior independence and strong national identities. Incorporated forcefully into the USSR as a result of Stalin’s 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Baltic States suffered from years of deportations and the suppression of national identity. To consolidate control over all three Baltic States, Stalin in 1941 ordered mass deportations of threatening groups including non-communist leaders and wealthy capitalists. Over four nights, 35,000 people were taken away from Lithuania alone. This resulted in significant discontent and national grievances from the Baltic populace. However, these secessionist sentiments lingered on the periphery of the three Baltic States because demands for national autonomy or criticism of Soviet actions such as Russification were seen as anti-Soviet.  These behaviors were punishable by long prison terms or by exile. As such, Soviet rule had come to be seen as an unalterable fact of life and a permanent state of affairs.

Glasnost upended this system and provided a platform for these suppressed grievances and secessionist sentiments to make their way into the national consciousness. When glasnost first began in late 1986 and early 1987, it contained no strong nationalist component. As an Estonian sociologist later presciently observed, “neither its chief architects nor the broad public were prepared for the possible rise of national movements.” However, with the growing atmosphere of press freedom and narratives challenging the postulates of Marxism and what the regime had hidden came to light, the Baltic populace began to question Soviet narratives and focused on uncovering the Stalinist past. Specifically, in Lithuania after 1987, between 150-200 letters were received daily at the Institute for Philosophy, Sociology and Justice about grievances from Stalin’s mass deportations. 

Motivated by historical grievances about Stalin’s brutality, nationalist movements in the Baltic States gained momentum as these issues were publicly acknowledged. These grievances became rallying points for national movements seeking autonomy. The opening up of Soviet history ignited decades of pent up anger, national ethnic humiliation, and an early desire for self-determination. The Soviet populace began to question the legitimacy of the state that they had been forced to follow. This was a major contradiction with Gorbachev’s initial goal: glasnost inadvertently increased resentment towards the government as opposed to increasing trust in the bureaucracy. 

Paradoxically, the reason why nationalist movements were able to gain momentum is because glasnost made public assembly possible, leading to larger and more frequent demonstrations. Prior to glasnost, protests were rare and closely monitored by the Soviet state. The first wave of protests in the Baltics (~1986) revolved around environmental concerns (including protests against nuclear power, water pollution). Environmental concerns were harder to suppress as they affected public health as opposed to concerns that directly challenged Soviet rule. Even in an authoritarian state, public health was a fundamental human right—the populace did not want to be exposed to nuclear waste and dirty water. Poor environmental regulations would rightfully foment the anger of the people. Historian Olga King articulates that the reason why the environmental movement was the first to surface stems from the fact that Soviet authorities did not perceive it as relatively harmful.

These environmental protests were at the center of the initial creation of grassroots activist movements that later led to nationalist secessionist movements on two fronts. First, environmental concerns shed concerns about broader Soviet governance. The Soviet Union prioritized industrial development over ecological safety: glasnost allowed suppressed information about environmental disasters to surface. As a result of the systemic policies that resulted in these environmental concerns, the Soviet people began to see the connection between environmental degradation and the systemic flaws of the Soviet regime which led to larger protests about the issues pervading the system. In the Eastern bloc, similar environmental movements were occurring which became a gateway for political dissent. For example, early protests about environmentalism in Czechoslovakia focused solely on environmental conservation and avoided political criticism. Soon, dissident groups connected environmental degradation as a failure of the Communist regime. Environmental issues were framed as a violation of human rights and a consequence of the USSR’s structural flaws. Second, the lack of response to the environmental protests emboldened more activists; people realized that they could criticize the government without immediate repression, which is why they began to test the boundaries of permissible dissent. This emboldenment of activists paved the way for more radical opposition movements which ultimately undermined the Soviet Union, a major contradiction from glasnost’s initial goal. These seemingly apolitical environmental protests fomented the second wave of protests. 

The January 1987 Plenum and the 70th Anniversary of the October Revolution were significant inflection points in the development of protests as a result of glasnost. Coupled with the success of environmental protests, the plenum’s exposé about Stalinist grievances resulted in the shift from environmental concerns to nationalist mobilization. This is why, by Spring of 1987, small groups of hippies, ecologists, Jewish refuseniks, Russian nationalists and Baltic dissidents tested permissible boundaries by engaging in small-scale demonstrations in the Baltics.

Mass protests in Latvia and Estonia on the anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (Stalin’s treaty that put the Baltics under the Soviet sphere of influence) occurred in 1987. As a result of glasnost, Soviet authorities granted permits for the rallies, which was a precedent setting show of solicitude in a region where Moscow kept close vigilance against nationalist sentiment. Describing one of the protests, Ints Calitis, a Latvian dissident, said “The atmosphere at today’s rally was exciting. The statements made against the Hitler-Stalin pact were sharp and strong. In a way, it was a triumph of the position of the people over the authorities.” Calitis was not alone — Janis Shkapars, a protestor, described the protests saying, “I am afraid. There is too much euphoria. We are in a revolutionary situation.” Occurring throughout 1987 and 1988, these protests demonstrated the Soviet populace’s disillusionment with the Soviet government and were a huge exertion of Baltic self-determination, which undermined Gorbachev’s goal of Soviet unity. These demonstrations laid the groundwork for protests in the future. Eve Parnastate, an Estonian activist said “The first step has been accomplished. They are already conceding that there was an occupation in Estonia 40 years ago.”

The success of these initial demonstrations encouraged activists to create larger, broader, and more organized political movements which were called the Popular Fronts. The Popular Fronts brought together diverse groups who realized the need for a formal structure to coordinate actions and amplify their demands. Through the formation of these organizations, the protests shifted from spontaneous acts of resistance to coherent and organized political movements. All three Popular Fronts presented autonomic demands for economies to be self governing, languages to have official status, and commemoration for the victims of Stalin’s crimes. 

The first Popular Front that formed was on April 13, 1988 in Estonia by Edgar Savisaar, when he appeared on television and called for the formation of a mass movement to press from below for the democratization that Gorbachev was promising from above. He immediately received thousands of letters of support, which allowed him to establish a formal founding Congress for the Popular Front of Estonia at the start of October 1988. Inspired by Savisaar’s idea of creating a unified movement, the idea was soon taken up in Latvia and Lithuania. In Lithuania, the creation of their Popular Front began in June 1988 when intellectuals, who were excited by news of developments in Estonia, elected a committee of thirty-five people called the Initiative Group of the Movement for Perestroika in Lithuania, or ‘Sajudis’ for short. Sajudis grew rapidly, organizing meetings and demonstrations throughout Lithuania. In October 1988, the Sajudis held their founding congress, attended by over 1,000 delegates, and elected to adopt a program advocating for greater autonomy, cultural revival, and democratization. Similarly, in Latvia, the Popular Front was officially founded when intellectuals, activists, environmentalists, and reformists convened to establish a structured political organization that advocated for Latvian independence.

The 1988 and 1989 elections were pivotal in the history of the Popular Fronts, as they gained many seats in the Parliament, securing local power and legitimizing pro-independence movements in the Baltic States. These electoral victories gave the Popular Fronts more legitimacy within the government, and also served as a mechanism to challenge Soviet rule from within the system. In doing so, these states were able to call for real autonomy and independence which ultimately contradicted Gorbachev’s goal of unity. As a result of their electoral successes, Baltic popular movements were able to enjoy almost unlimited access to official facilities, including meeting halls, offices, and printing presses that previously were only available to official groups that were closely monitored by the party.

Perhaps the most significant inflection point in the development of the Popular Fronts was the organization of the “Baltic Way” in 1989: a human chain that stretched from Tallinn in Estonia to Vilnius in Lithuania. In a gargantuan, globally televised spectacle, over 2 million people linked hands and created a 430-mile linkage to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and objection to Soviet rule. In organizing the protests, Estonian activist Marju Laruristin articulated that the protests served as a mechanism for the Baltics to “regain our freedom so that our children can live in a free country”.  Rhetoric during the protests was harshly anti-Soviet and in full support of the autonomy for the Baltic States. Protestors chanted “freedom, freedom”, waving banners and placards that read: We Do Not Want To Live In A Totalitarian Empire, and Down With The Russian Empire. Other anti-Soviet posters on display at the rally likened the Soviet Communist regime to Nazi Germany; slogans shouted included “The Soviet occupation army must go home” and “the free world cannot stand by any longer”. Describing the protests, Heinz Valk, a protestor, declared that “We are proclaiming to each other and to the whole world that we in the Baltic nations have never given up our freedom.” The Baltic Way’s biggest achievement was inducing the Soviet Union to admit to its past crimes including acknowledging the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The success and scale of these protests gained major news coverage worldwide, launching the Popular Fronts into the spotlight which built international sympathy for Baltic sovereignty; this attention also put international pressure on the Soviet Union by exposing its repressive history. 

As the Popular Fronts gained momentum, the Baltic republics issued declarations of sovereignty, moving to diminish the Central Party’s power. Lithuania proclaimed the reconstitution of its independence on March 11, 1990, followed by Estonia’s proclamation that Soviet power was illegal in Estonia and that a transition period must ensue to restore an independent Republic on March 30, 1990. Two months later, on May 4, 1990, Latvia declared that their annexation to the USSR was illegal. These bold calls for secession were a reflection of the newfound space for political dissent and national self-expression made possible by glasnost. 

The Baltic States’ declarations of independence had a transformative spillover effect to other states that proved catastrophic to the Kremlin; they served as an ominous and swift impetus to legislators in other republics to draft their own acts of sovereignty adapted to local circumstances. If the Baltics could get away with declaring sovereignty and millions of them could hold hands across all three states in favor of independence, why should other Soviet republics not be expected to press their own claims for popular sovereignty against their repressive, Kremlin-controlled regimes? Thus, by the end of 1990, 14 of the 15 Union republics had calls for sovereignty, inspired by the Baltic model. What had begun as a regional challenge to Soviet control in the Baltics had snowballed into a broader separatist wave: the possibility of the dissolution of the Soviet Union began to loom large and imminent. 

Faced with the disintegration of central authority as a result of these nationalist movements, Soviet leaders responded with force. In contrast to Gorbachev’s restraint in 1986-87 at glasnost’s inception, Soviet authorities in January 1991 cracked down in Lithuania and Latvia, killing and wounding scores of unarmed civilians. On January 13, 1991, Soviet troops attacked communications centers in the Lithuanian capital, killing 15 unarmed civilians. On January 20, troops and police units similarly attacked the Interior Ministry in Riga, Latvia, killing four civilians. The same day, multiple explosions occurred in Tallinn, Estonia, as local pro-Moscow forces sought to create the impression of impending chaos. This violence in the three Baltic States backfired, as glasnost-enabled media such as Lithuania’s Sajudis publications and Latvia’s Atmoda, alongside Western broadcasts, amplified the brutality of the Soviet crackdown, which galvanized the Baltic populace. Baltic citizens formed human barricades around government buildings to protest Soviet violence during the crackdowns; a militaristic storming of these parliaments would seriously damage Gorbachev’s international reputation, which is why Soviet forces refrained from escalating the crackdown further.  These events only strengthened the Baltic people’s unwavering resolve to seek full independence from the Soviet Union, undermining Gorbachev’s goal of a reformed Union. What would follow over the next 11 months would be a precipitous avalanche of blazingly fast events that would lead to the staggering fall of the Soviet Union. 

As a result of the failures of these violent crackdowns and increased secessionist sentiment, Gorbachev proposed a Union Treaty on February 6, 1991, offering republics sovereignty while maintaining central control over foreign policy, defense, and taxation. The Baltic States rejected the treaty because it did not give them enough autonomy. In response to the newly proposed treaty, on February 9, 1991, Lithuania put the question of independence to a popular vote and 90% supported independence. On March 3rd, the Estonians and Latvians did the same thing with 79% and 74% respectively supporting independence. These referendums, organized by the Baltic Popular Fronts, were a direct affront to Gorbachev’s authority; anti-Soviet sentiment from glasnost had resulted in irrevocable demands for autonomy. 

On the eve of August 18, 1991, nine republics were preparing to sign a revised version of the Union Treaty. Unlike the initial version from February, which retained centralized control over key areas like taxation, this August draft would have deprived Moscow of most of its economic power over the republics, giving them significant autonomy to govern themselves. As Union stability was crumbling, the prospect of this treaty triggered a coup attempt as a last-ditch attempt to preserve centralized Soviet power. On August 19th, an eight-man junta of Soviet hardliners announced that they were assuming power. They placed Gorbachev (who was vacationing in Crimea) under house arrest, claiming that he was ill and unable to govern. To reverse the liberalization from Gorbachev’s reforms, they banned demonstrations, closed newspapers, and outlawed political parties. The attempt of the hardliners to seize power only lasted three days: Boris Yeltsin, the recently elected president of Russia, emerged as a leader of the growing resistance against Gorbachev. When the hardliners sent troops to besiege the Russian parliament, a crowd of 100,000 people were gathered to defend Boris Yeltsin and his government. 

Not only was the desperate and destabilizing coup a failure, it discredited the central Soviet government and the Communist Party which catalyzed the dissolution of the once fearsome nation in a few months. When Gorbachev returned to Moscow after the coup to continue his position as General Secretary, he was “rendered virtually powerless by the changed political context.” Trying to piece the Soviet Union back together, Gorbachev argued that there would be dire consequences if the Soviet republics refused to agree to a new federal structure. He produced further diluted versions of the Union Treaty which aimed to limit the Soviet central government’s functions to solely defense, foreign policy, transportation, environmental regulation, and human rights, while giving republics autonomy over all other functions. The Soviet republics, empowered by the political aperture that glasnost offered, no longer saw reform as sufficient: they demanded full independence. Gorbachev also attempted to salvage a Union of Sovereign States, which never materialized due to its lack of formal ratification. Gorbachev’s ideas for a renewed Union were no longer viable because glasnost had legitimized national self-determination calls from the Soviet republics. 

The republics’ rejection of Gorbachev’s federal structure resulted in an even further shift towards independence. Inspired by the Baltic States, Georgia, Armenia, and Turkmenistan all held referendums in which majorities voted for independence. However, the most decisive turning point was the Ukrainian election on December 1, 1991, where over 90% of voters supported independence. Emboldened by Ukraine’s secessionist stance, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus shortly thereafter signed the Minsk Declaration, which established a Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) that would serve as a successor to the USSR. Glasnost’s political platform enabled this shift because public discourse and nationalist mobilization faced little central resistance. This declaration was ratified by the Supreme Soviet on December 12, 1991. Shocking in its unceremonious descent, the USSR formally dissolved when eleven republics signed the Alma-Ata Declaration on December 21st, which formalized the CIS and agreed to the “dissolution of the USSR”. Four days later—on December 25th—Gorbachev resigned as the General Secretary of the Soviet Union. The Soviet flag ceased to fly over the Kremlin, marking the definitive end of the USSR and the end to the 50-year Cold War: an outcome fueled directly by glasnost. 

Section IV: Conclusion 

As Gorbachev developed glasnost, he sought controlled reforms to revitalize the nation. He intended for glasnost to involve the open discussion of economic inefficiencies and bureaucratic corruption to garner support for restructuring the Soviet economy. However, state imposed constraints on glasnost backfired because of the public’s thirst for more freedom and fissures which emerged in the regime’s ideological foundation: the government was unable to contain the dormant fury roused by glasnost. Glasnost fostered transparency and civic engagement from Soviet society, which exposed failures within the system through events such as Chernobyl, the January 1987 Plenum, and the opening up about Soviet history. 

The unintended consequences of Gorbachev’s glasnost were a significant contributor to the downfall of the once mighty and feared Soviet Union. Glasnost’s crevice ruptured into an abyss of historical grievances and nationalist sentiments that ultimately became the doom of the USSR. The indignations were most deeply felt in the Baltic States due to decades of repressed ethnic tensions. These states exploited glasnost’s platform and poorly played hand of the Soviet government to get it to capitulate to the demands of the Popular Fronts. In doing so, the Popular Fronts challenged Soviet legitimacy through declaring sovereignty, a major contradiction of Gorbachev’s initial goals of revitalizing the economy and strengthening the legitimacy of the Soviet government. 

In conclusion, perhaps historians Beissinger, Marples, and D’Agostino were all right. Their divergent views are not mutually exclusive but rather inextricably linked and complementary. The openness of glasnost would not have by itself, given a burning platform to the Popular Fronts, if there weren’t incendiary grievances to burn over (such as decades long ethnic indignation, economic strife, and national demoralization). Without the epiphany to the ideological hypocrisy and the “moral collapse” of the Soviet Union which undermined the State’s authority, the Popular Fronts would not have fully turned their national grievances into secessionist sentiment. The repressed hostilities and nationalism in the USSR would not have had a platform to surface without the ignition of glasnost. There would have been no right to assembly and expression, without which the mass protests of the Popular Fronts could have occurred. Together, all of these factors: mobilization, structural issues, and ideological crisis gave fuel to the fire of the Popular Fronts, leading to the demise of the USSR which marked the end of the Cold War. 

In the end, was glasnost a success or a failure? While Gorbachev moved the Soviet Union towards democracy, he lost the once feared goliath of a nation that was the very subject of his reform process. Glasnost’s failure to achieve Gorbachev’s vision of a revitalized Soviet state was a product of its success in unleashing suppressed voices of Soviet society. Undoubtedly, glasnost was a short-term catastrophe for the Soviet Union through its dissolution in less than five years. However, in the long-term, glasnost put an end to the Cold War, to the inexorable tit-for-tat arms race, and the militarization of the Soviet Union. 

In his final address to the Soviet Union, Gorbachev stated, “The most damaging thing about this crisis is the breakup of the statehood. [...] Some mistakes could surely have been avoided. Many things could have been done better. But I am convinced that sooner or later our common efforts will bear fruit, our nations will live in a prosperous and democratic society.” The tragedy of glasnost lies in its ironic triumph. It unleashed freedom across the Soviet Union that led to its dissolution, shockingly marking the end of the 50 years of the Cold War that would introduce a new world order of a differently played global game with new players and new polarities. 

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