Gorbachev was a more serious reformer than he was generally believed to be both at home and in the
West, and he was interested in promoting not only an economic reform, but also, to implement
glasnost. His ideas about reforming the economy and the entire state apparatus were a result of his
travels into France and Italy at age 39. During these trips, he experienced the living standard of the
Occidental countries, and returned to his country with the determination to catch up with the West.
During Gorbachev’s rising career within the party structure, life in Russia changed, with more and more
people moving to urban areas, and demanding proper living conditions. More than 90% of the people
owned refrigerators and another 60% had a washing machine. Most were dissatisfied with the sizes of
their apartments and with the insufficiency of consumer goods. This dissatisfaction was fed by the
increasing access to information, through television and radio. More than 93% of the households had TV
sets by the 1980s, and authorities permitted the translation of foreign family serials, which made
Russians understand how far behind they were as compared to the West.
When Gorbachev took over the power as general secretary, the party met him with enthusiasm and high
hopes. He was relatively young, well-educated and full of energy. He had immense power, being able to
affect the lives of 285 millions of people. He appointed Yegor Ligachev as his number two. With his new
team, he tried to discover the best way to “bridge the gap between socialism’s ideals and its
disappointing realities”. He launched two separate programs, “perestroika” and “glasnost” meant solve
the economic problems of the large Soviet Union. Perestroika was his restructuring program, which was
meant to replace the centralized economy with a market economy after the capitalist model.
Accompanying it was glasnost, a policy meant to loosen the government’s control over media, religious
