Gobichov was not a public politician and the sove union didn't have elections. He thought that if you give people a greater degree of economic freedom, if you stop lying all the time, surely it will be better. The empire could only be held together by lies of propaganda and repressions and violence against its own people. When they loosened those two staples, if you like, those two pillars o the system collapsed. It could not be held by anything but repression and violence.