Word: blocs
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Demonstration. Just as if his emissaries had not aided the changes, Soviet Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev sent his warm congratulations to Husák. So did most of the other East Bloc leaders. Predictable protests came from the West, the loudest of them voiced by the West European Communists, who had seen in Dubček's liberal form of Communism an opportunity to enhance their own appeal to voters in their own countries...
...repression. New laws were enacted that granted rights ranging from freedom of the press and speech to the privilege of traveling abroad and emigrating. Artistic and political expression bloomed, and the country pulsed with hope and excitement. But Czechoslovakia's new ebullience frightened the Soviet and other East Bloc leaders, who feared that their own people would demand similar reforms. At a Warsaw Pact summit meeting in Dresden in March 1968, East German Boss Walter Ulbricht reportedly waved his arms ominously over the other Party leaders, warning: "We will all soon be in danger, if not swept...
Though the foreign ministers were gathered to celebrate NATO's 20th anniversary, they used the occasion to discuss how the 15-member alliance* should react to changing technological and political realities, especially to overtures from the East bloc for improved relations. In an address to the delegates, President Nixon came as close as anyone could to summing up NATO's attitude toward its Communist opponents. "All of us are ready as conditions change," said the President, "to turn that fist [of self-defense] into the hand of friendship." But, warned the President, "it is not enough to talk...
...Nicolae Ceauşescu is to see his country out grow its role as the melon-and- cucumber patch of Eastern Europe. Nothing will change, he realizes, if the Russians have their way. So Ceauşescu stubbornly resists the integration of Rumania's economy with the Soviet bloc's Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon). Instead, he relies largely on Western technology to turn his country toward industrialization...
...such industrial tools as airplanes, chemical equipment and textile machinery. Already half of Rumania's trade is with non-Communist countries, compared with only 20% a decade ago. Rumania's industrial pro duction grew 12% in 1968, the great est increase of any country in the Eastern bloc. The expansion was more than twice as rapid as that of Czechoslovakia or Hungary, and it exceeded the U.S.S.R.'s growth rate by one third...