On March 11, 1985, Michail Gorbachev had been unanimously elected as general secretary of the Communist Party and thus leader of the USSR.
The late 1980s in Russia were widely associated with Mikhail Gorbachev and his glasnost (meaning “openness”) policy reform. The literal meaning of perestroika is “reconstruction”, referring to the restructuring of the Soviet political and economic system, in an attempt to end the Era of Stagnation.
Perestroika allowed more independent actions from various ministries and introduced many market-like reforms. For the first time in decades, Russian people were allowed to leave the country which immediately resulted in the third wave of massive Russian immigration.
What I had to do in order to get International Travel Passport is a different story, but I still remember the day I got permission to leave the country for the first time.
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Photo: IMDb