Glasnost in the Mailroom: The Soviet Subject in Gorbachev’s Perestroika, 1985–1988

Abstract

This article examines letters on glasnost sent to the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party in 1987 and compiled by the Central Committee’s Letter Department in a booklet for the Politburo in 1988. Contextualized by other sources from the archive of this Letter Department and others, these sources begin to illuminate how the Central Committee’s Letter Department functioned and how it evolved during Perestroika. These letters also allow us to begin to incorporate more ordinary citizens’ conceptions of glasnost into the history of this concept. These sources show at least four definitions of glasnost that circulated in the first years of reform. None of these definitions coincided with the liberal concept of “freedom of speech”. The conversation about glasnost in these letters challenges the common liberal teleology of studies of Perestroika, highlighting the distinctly Soviet nature of those who wrote letters and the concepts they wrote about.