For Periodization of Perestroika in Media

Abstract

The Soviet ideological products of Perestroika and Glasnost have been studied in both the West and the post-Soviet space for almost three decades now. Internationally, Glasnost, as one of the key components of Perestroika, is considered the most vivid example of change and development in the traditional Soviet media of the 1980s-1990s, a period drawing the keen interest of Western scientists and researchers. Nonetheless, manifestations of Glasnost in the period of declared Perestroika in Georgia have yet to be duly studied, systematized, and researched. This article seeks to put together—based on reviewing academic sources related to studying the specifics of the Glasnost period—systematization approaches applied to the Glasnost period, at both all-Soviet and local Georgian levels; to point out key phases in the development and transformation of the Georgian media from 1985 to 1990 marking newreality. Periodization of the political process known as Perestroika is important in a variety of political equations in that this chronological categorization shows the impact of various events from that period on the process of Perestroika, on focal shifts from the perspective of central and local authorities. This periodization also depends on the researcher’s perspective, because Perestroika’s constituents, including Glasnost, were studied by a diversity of political and media school in different years, or contemporaneously with Perestroika, or shortly after its end, or maybe even a little later, that is, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This circumstance is of crucial importance in terms of constructivism, as the distance from processes or events largely defines how their meaning is perceived and established.