Chp+28+Post+Industrial+Society

=Polly.= Postindustrial Society and the End of the Cold War Order In 1969, Jan Palach, a twenty one year old philosophy student, drove to a main square in Prague, drenched his body with gasoline, and set himself on fire. Before that, he had put aside his coat with a message in it demanding an end to Communist repression in Czechoslovakia. It promised more such suicides unless the government lifted state censorship. The manifesto was signed: “Torch No. 1.”

As the USSR experienced invisible economic decay, a reform-minded leader—Mikhail Gorbachev—directed his nation to change course and initiated new policies of economic and political freedom.