Word: blocs
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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While President Nixon prepared for his swing through the capitals of Western Europe, Eastern Europe last week marked a melancholy milestone. Six months have passed since Warsaw Pact tanks rumbled into Czechoslovakia, but Communism's East Bloc still remains uneasy and uncertain...
Like Western Europe, Eastern Europe is pulling apart. It is torn by resurgent nationalism and the desire to trade with the West. These trends run directly counter to the interests of the Soviet Union, which seeks to dominate the bloc's economic activities through Comecon, the Communist equivalent of the Common Market, and to control political developments through Moscow-dominated Communist parties. But Comecon is a failure, and the Soviet attempt to impose its will on Czechoslovakia now appears to have created more problems than it solved...
...Russian invasion, as far as the Italians are concerned, could scarcely have occurred at a worse time. Italian Communists have made steady political progress in 25 years. In the most recent national election last May, the party won 8,500,000 votes, or 26.9% of the total cast. Its bloc of 177 members in the Chamber of Deputies is the second biggest, after the Christian Democrats, and makes it impossible for the Christian Democrats to govern except through a coalition. The coalition-Christian Democrats and Socialists-is increasingly shaky, and the new government of Premier Mariano Rumor is beset...
...muster support, Nixon might chop as much as $2 billion out of dubious programs. First to feel the ax should be maritime subsidies, which now cost about $500 million a year, money largely ill-spent. Also due for pruning is the farm bloc's annual harvest of $3.5 billion in subsidies, two-thirds of which goes to farmers with incomes of more than $20,000. The fact that Mississippi's Senator James Eastland's plantations receive $157,930 a year for not growing cotton - while some of his constituents go hungry - ought to be reproach enough. Ironically...
...middle-aged Southern conservative. Yet in the Senate leadership contest between Ted Kennedy and Russell Long, a number of members marked their secret ballots not on the basis of ideology or regional interest, but according to their personal ambitions, alliances, or animosities. Some notable deviations from the customary bloc pattern...