Well, that's boring. I always thought the Soviets danced their way to freedom. No? It was Glasnost and Perestroika? All right. Right, but Gorbachev's Perestroika and Glasnost opened up the Soviet political and economic systems with contested local elections, less restricted civil society groups, less censorship, more autonomy for the Soviet republics, more non-state-run businesses, and more autonomy for state-run farms. Glasnost, or openness, led to more information from the West, and less censorship led to a flood of criticism as people realized how much poorer the Second World was than the First.