History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union indications Gorbachev may have been in control prior to Chernenko's death as he was announced as the new General Secretary the day after Chernenko died on March 10, 1985. Gorbachev instituted policies of glasnost, perestroika, and acceleration. Glasnost allowed freedom of speech in the Soviet Union and a flourishing of political debate within the Communist Party to a degree not seen since the Russian Revolution, perestroika was an attempt to restructure the political and particularly the economic organisation of the country, while acceleration meant faster development of the economy. This period of liberalisation ultimately ended in the dissolution of the
The Age of Openness international perspective." While Dikötter does not deny the devastation caused by the Chinese Civil War or the Japanese invasion, he nonetheless argues that the Republican period was a "golden age of openness" in which the country was making substantial progress toward modernity, boldly experimenting with ideas and market reforms, and building vast infrastructure projects. Historian Jonathan Spence wrote that "The Age of Openness" ""presents a cornucopia of graphic examples to show that China in the first half of the twentieth century, far from being in a state of decay that called for revolutionary action, was in fact a vibrant and