First.

It’s high time to remember that our first allegiance is to the human race. And the human race broke away from the animal world through thought and speech. It is natural that these should be free. And if they are shackled—we return to our animal state.

Glasnost, forthright and total glasnost—this is the first prerequisite for the health of any society, including our own. Whoever does not desire glasnost for our country is indifferent to his fatherland and thinks of nothing but his personal gain. Whoever does not desire glasnost for his fatherland—does not wish to cleanse it from diseases, but, rather, to drive them inside, there to fester.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, from "Open Letter to the Secretariat of the RSFSR Writers’ Union"