Use BBC.com or the new BBC App to listen to BBC podcasts, Radio 4 and the World Service outside the UK.

Find out how to listen to other BBC stations

Episode details

World Service,22 Jun 2012,10 mins

Perestroika

Witness History

Available for over a year

Reform in the Soviet Union, known as perestroika, was launched 25 years ago in 1987. It was accompanied by glasnost, openness, which meant that classics of Russian literature could be published. Louise Hidalgo talks to three people who remember those exciting days in Moscow. As she hears, there were many that greeted the initial policy changes with scepticism. (Photo: Mikhail Gorbachev (centre right) meets with participants of the Warsaw Pact Foreign Ministers' Committee in Moscow on March 25, 1987 Credit: AFP / Getty Images)

Programme Website
More episodes