Gorbachev’s reforms not only liberated ordinary Russians from the straitjacket of Marxism-Leninism, but also released the national aspirations of people who had been locked in the empire for centuries. Having seen the peoples of Central Europe free themselves from Soviet domination just two years before, the constituent nations of the USSR were beginning to seek the same freedom for themselves.
戈尔巴乔夫的改革不仅把普通俄罗斯人从马克思列宁主义中解放出来，而且解放了受控于这个帝国长达数个世纪的人民的民族渴望。见到中欧人民将自己从苏联统治下解放出来，苏联的各个加盟国也开始作同样的尝试。