ABSTRACT
The modern information revolution, intelligently applied from the top in a way consonant with the traditions of Soviet political culture, is being used to stimulate at least the appearance of change, movement, and the encouragement of innovation. Glasnost is the indispensable tool for the process of ‘democratization’ slowly being carried out in the USSR — not of course in the sense of western liberalism, pluralism, and human rights, but rather in accordance with Leninist norms. Indeed glasnost may well work to the disadvantage of Jews in the USSR in so far as it inevitably leads to a loosening of social controls, dislocation, and upheaval as well as to a much greater freedom to openly express ethnic, religious, and other forms of prejudice. Equally, the new glasnost should eventually entail a greater freedom for Jewish culture and religion in the USSR, perhaps even a gradual restoration of the ties that once linked Russian Jewry with the rest of the Jewish world.
