The Cry of the New Martyrs - Scars of Atheism Westerners are the only people who sincerely believe that Gorbachev wants real democracy.
People believe what they want to believe.
The West sees the Soviet Union like we see the moon just one side. Orthodox Poetess and former prisoner of conscience, Irina Ratushinskaya. The only three weapons of the believers are truth, truth, truth. If Russian believers were free to witness, the atheists would quickly disappear. In launching perestroika, Gorbachev aimed at reviving a mined economy whose woes the Soviets had masked for decades with smiling slogans and bogus statistics.