ABSTRACT
Glasnost' was spurred in 1986 by the abolition of the censorship functions of Glavlit, the Chief Administration for Literary and Publishing Affairs, the principal censorship organization. As instances of historical reassessment inspired by Glasnost', this chapter investigates three themes, the collectivization of agriculture in 1929–33, the famine of 1932–3 and the Second World War. When Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in March 1985 as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he had neither a particular interest nor a predetermined plan to promote historical revisionism. In the years before Gorbachev became General Secretary, reform-minded members of the Party's Central Committee, with Andropov's blessing and Chernenko's benign neglect, fostered reformist analyses and a consultative approach to policy making. In a speech in October 1986 to heads of social science departments in schools, Gorbachev had called for the revision of academic lectures, textbooks and curricula in order to foster independent judgement and 'creative thinking'.
