was the policy of maximal publicity, openness, and transparency in the activities of all government institutions in the Soviet Union, together with freedom of information, introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the second half of 1980s. The word is a transliteration of the Russian word Гласность and was frequently used by Gorbachev to specify the policies he believed might help reduce the corruption at the top of the Communist Party and the Sov… (More on Glasnost)