glasnost

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The Word of the Day for February 2 is:

glasnost   \GLAHZ-nohst\   noun
     : a Soviet policy permitting open discussion of political and social 
issues and freer dissemination of news and information

Example sentence:
     Yuri welcomed glasnost because he could finally publish the article he had 
written about poverty in Moscow. 

Did you know?
     "Glasnost" wasn't coined by former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, but 
he was responsible for catapulting the word into the international media and 
the English vocabulary. The term derives from the Russian adjective "glasnyi," 
which means "public" and which itself traces to "glas," a root meaning "voice." 
In Russian, "glasnost" was originally used (as long ago as the 18th century) in 
the general sense of "publicity," and the Oxford English Dictionary reports 
that V.I. Lenin used it in the context of freedom of information in the Soviet 
state. However, it wasn't until Gorbachev declared it a public policy in the 
mid-1980s that "glasnost" became widely known and used in English.





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