Glasnost': Deception, Desperation, Dialectics

The Soviet -new thinking- reforms constitute the implementation of a plan from the mid-1960s when the Soviets recognized a serious problem with their socio-economic and political systems. A marked change from Soviet practices of the Stalin era, this plan required a new type of leader whose personality could sell the -new thinking- changes to the West. Mikhail S. Gorbachev, their carefully trained and groomed salesman, became the -front man- for this radical program, "glasnost'." The expected results are a stronger Soviet Union from which the Soviets can consolidate their world position and propagate international, Marxist-Leninist socialism, and a one-world society in which there is no opposition to their system."