Робертс о гласности
Читаю сейчас книгу Питера Робертса "George Costakis: A Russian Life in Art". О самой книге речь впереди, а пока просто хотел процитировать, что пишет автор о гласности и перестройке. Мне кажется, очень точно сформулировано.

The word glasnost is translated in the Western press as "openness", and that is the sense of it. But the Russian root of the word is golos, and the meaning of golos in English is "voice". So the fundamental sense of glasnost is making things public by speaking out. After at least fifty years during which speaking out meant loss of job, prison, or at some periods death, the significance of Gorbachev's word to every Russian was immense. For artists, for whom there is no life except in speaking out in one form or another, the proclamation of glasnost, and the sure evidence that Gorbachev meant what he said, was like being unexpectedly set free half-way through a life sentence.

Soviet society lived on lies for so long that even people who know that fact - and most Russians do know it - still cannot tell what is a lie and what is not. But truth is indivisible; you cannot tell the truth when it suits you and otherwise tell lies. Nor can you tell the truth to a few of your friends and lies to the rest of the population, not if you want to bring about change. So in Russia since 1985 the truth has come surging out in unprecedented and almost uncontrollable torrents... The effect on the Russian economy of Gorbachev's reforms and then of Yeltsin's is still in doubt. But the effect on the arts and the artists, whose stock in trade is telling the truth about life as they see it, has been enormous.

Конечно, это относится не только к художникам. Всякий порядочный человек тяготился ложью, которая была совершенно неотъемлемой частью советской жизни. Но получив возможность говорить то, что думаем, мы не только не ценим ее, но и готовы порой продать за чечевичную похлебку.