Perestroika and glasnost: the significance of the two great reforms

The meaning was new. But the word, in Russian, already existed. “Perestroika” it means restructuring. In the USSR of Mikhail Gorbachev it became synonymous with reform, then with democratization. A plan to reform communism, to make it a social democratic system, with political pluralism, free elections, a market economy or rather a mixed economy, private companies and state enterprises.