Tag #145750 - Interview #78185 (Osip Hotinskiy)

In the late 1980s the General Secretary of the CPSU, Mikhail Gorbachev [44] introduced the new policy of the Party: perestroika. This was freedom for us that Soviet citizens hadn't seen throughout the period of the Soviet regime: freedom of travel and freedom of press. Before this period we listened to Radio Free Europe [45] to hear the news, but now we were overwhelmed by the quantities of information avalanching down on us. Newspapers and magazines published articles that we would have never imagined to appear. Books formerly forbidden in the USSR were published; movies that had been kept in closed archives for many years were shown. It became possible to correspond and visit people abroad and invite friends and relatives.