2002/01/01 by Róbert Horváth · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Eastern European Communism and Reforms #Lawlessness #Publicity #Nothing #Law #Newspaper #Appearance of impropriety #Political science #History #Philosophy #Epistemology
paper · doi:10.1057/9780230506114_8
openalex publication_date 2002/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
The Russian word ‘glasnost’ has no precise English translation, a fact which impressed Vladimir Bukovskii on his arrival in the West in 1976: For us there, in the Soviet Union, glasnost was a weapon, a means of struggle with lawlessness and tyranny. Indeed, a means of defence like the safety belt of a mountain climber. Yet the word does not exist in any European language, which substitute the word ‘publicity,’ distorting the sense of the concept. In the Russian word glasnost there is something cold and exact, like a surgical instrument, something very serious and solemn, from which immediately you imagine a duma clerk, bearded and in long robes, declaiming from the Spassky gate a government document. In essence, something like an oath to speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. 2 These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.