Word: bialer
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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According to Columbia University Sovietologist Seweryn Bialer, the old guard under Andropov will be characterized, while it lasts, by "reticence and restraint." Bialer believes that Andropov will not immediately have sufficient authority to try a fresh approach to Soviet foreign and domestic policy, let alone undertake the radical economic reforms that are needed to boost the U.S.S.R.'s declining growth rate. To achieve the degree of personal power exercised by Brezhnev, the new leader will have to build a potent coalition of supporters among the younger men in the party Central Committee who are straining to share power...
...same time, the new regime may be obliged to use intimidation or raw force in Eastern Europe, where it might face unrest and rebellion, similar to that in Poland, during the rest of the 1980s. "The Soviet imperial system is suffering from a sickness, a deep systemic crisis," says Bialer. "For the Kremlin, Poland is not a cold, but pneumonia." With their stagnant economy, the Soviets will not be able to apply the balm of aid to their satellite states. This, in turn, could plunge the fragile economies of Eastern Europe into even deeper trouble...
Later, Andropov is said to have supported Hungarian Party Chief Janos Kadar's liberalizing economic reforms. But according to Columbia University's Seweryn Bialer, he is scarcely likely to model the gigantic, centrally planned Soviet economy on the Hungarian system, which has abolished most planning and is heavily dependent on imports and exports. As a secretary of the Central Committee from 1962 to 1967, he was in charge of relations with the Communist bloc, traveling to Eastern Europe, Albania, Yugoslavia and Viet Nam. Says the University of California's George Breslauer: "He has tended to take a more tolerant view...
...where we stand," there are reports that the Kremlin is currently engaged in a top-level debate over whether to try to improve relations with Reagan or to wait until a new Administration comes to power. "Reagan's rhetoric baffles them," says Columbia University Soviet Expert Seweryn Bialer, who met last month with Central Committee members...
...send troops to Lebanon, he has not yet reacted to the American military presence there. The Soviets also note that they have refrained from giving full support to Central American liberation movements and from directly invading Poland. "Their policy is still oriented toward a relationship with America," Bialer feels. A senior Western diplomat in Moscow agrees: "Some Soviet spokesmen have portrayed the relationship as hopeless, but that is not their real thinking...