Great article…sounds familiar. The last 3 paragraphs seem disjointed.

Moreover, in order to carry out economic reforms at all, Gorbachev had to break the power of a Soviet bureaucracy deeply invested in the existing economic system and its ideological underpinnings. To break their power and initiate Perestroika (reconstruction), Gorbachev felt that he needed to introduce Glasnost (openness, transparency) to reveal the flaws in the system and undermine their power and ability to block change. But this also meant undermining the centralized power of the Communist Party — at which point the Communist leaders of certain Soviet republics began to hedge their bets by appealing to local nationalism.