“I understood that there was something in our country that was not right,” Gorbachev told Mlynář during one of their later conversations.3 Now he had a chance to put it right. The spring air of 1985 was filled with enormous optimism and hope. It seemed so simple: shift the heavy tombstone of Soviet bureaucracy, and the nation would spring back to life with force and vitality. In the minds of Gorbachev’s reformers, unfettered socialism was the best system for releasing the creative potential of the people.
