People were queuing in a long line outside the store. A new bunch of deficit goods was brought. Among them were soaps, toilet paper, and butter. People waited patiently but they knew that for many there won’t be enough. Many will go home without the most necessary goods for living. The planning economy of USSR couldn’t provide every citizen with the goods for everyday living so most citizens lived very inadequately. This kind of unworthy existence would have continued for no one knows how long time if not the Third Awakening of Latvian nation. This awakening that began in 1987 led to Latvia’s independence in 1991.
The Third Awakening would have been much harder to begin if not the last General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev would have introduced glasnost and perestroika in the USSR, which rolled back restrictions to freedom in the Soviet Union.
During the second half of the 1980s the process of perestroika (restructuring) began in the Soviet Union. The dissident movement that had been subdued in the first half of the 1980s became reactivated in 1986. …
