In 1989, Boris Yeltsin (1931-2007) capitalized on the gains of glasnost to secure widespread support for his candidacy to the Congress of People’s Deputies, overcoming a contentious past with General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022) and emerging as a popular figure against conservative elements inside the Soviet Communist Party.

Just five months before his death, Nobel Peace Prize-winning physicist and dissident Andrei Sakharov (1921-1989) spoke out at the USSR’s First Congress of People’s Deputies, defying Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022) to advocate for a multi-party system in a speech broadcast live to millions—yet silenced within the Congress hall itself.

Pravda’s (1911-) coverage of the Human Chain on 24 August 1989, documenting the previous day’s political action by hundreds of thousands of Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians, who linked together in a 600-kilometer-long “living chain” (zhivaia tsep’) that stretched from Tallinn, Estonia to Vilnius, Lithuania. 

Documentation of the 17 March 1991 referendum in which Soviet voters weighed in on whether it was “essential” to “preserve the USSR” as a federation of “equal sovereign republics.” 80% of the eligible population participated, with 77.8% of that number voting YES. 

During perestroika, the Soviet government encouraged media to foster closer ties with citizens, leading to unprecedented reader engagement and evolving perceptions of press independence. In this June 1988 issue of the national weekly Literaturnaia gazeta, a reader objects to the editors’ choice to send a copy of his letter to the Party Central Committee.

Published in the 13 March 1988 issue of the daily newspaper “Sovetskaia Rossiia” (Soviet Russia), this letter by chemistry lecturer and Stalinist apologist Nina Andreeva (1938-2020) sparked tens of thousands of public responses, revealing that conservative currents in the Communist Party and beyond now faced strong resistance from a glasnost-empowered public.