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Reform in the Soviet Union, known as perestroika, was launched 25 years ago in 1987.

It was accompanied by glasnost, openness, which meant that classics of Russian literature could be published.

Louise Hidalgo talks to three people who remember those exciting days in Moscow. As she hears, there were many that greeted the initial policy changes with scepticism.

(Photo: Mikhail Gorbachev (centre right) meets with participants of the Warsaw Pact Foreign Ministers' Committee in Moscow on March 25, 1987 Credit: AFP / Getty Images)