Word: blocs
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...meetings in the Kremlin's steel-and-glass Palace of Congresses, delegates are to debate the future of Gorbachev's policies and, hence, perhaps of the General Secretary himself. The widespread expectation is that the conference will be far livelier than the set-piece meetings typical of East bloc politics. That prediction is buttressed by the presence among the delegations of fiery and independent-minded public figures. These include Boris Yeltsin, whom Gorbachev ousted late last year as Moscow party leader, apparently for being a bit too outspoken in favor of perestroika. Yeltsin was nevertheless elected a delegate from...
...should swoon over Gorbachev and confuse him for a liberal reformer intent on bringing political freedom to the oppressed peoples of the communist bloc. Nor should one forget that a bloated bureaucracy and an entrenched party still present formidable obstacles to Gorbachev's reforms...
...before she married and never played the part of First Lady. Contemporary examples elsewhere in the Communist world are uninspiring: in Rumania Nicolae Ceausescu's widely reviled wife Elena; in China the disgraced Jiang Qing, Mao Zedong's widow. Leonid Brezhnev's daughter Galina, once hailed as the East bloc's answer to Jacqueline Kennedy, later achieved notoriety by associating with shady characters...
...Kadar's replacement as Communist Party leader by Prime Minister Karoly Grosz, the mood in Budapest was still euphoric. "We won," exulted one party member last week. "It went beyond our expectations," said a high-ranking government figure. Agreed a Western diplomat: "The change is unprecedented in the Soviet bloc...
Once the East bloc's chief reformer, Kadar had run Hungary since Moscow installed him in power in 1956. Now he has the largely ceremonial post of party president. Few Hungarians seemed to care; all eyes were on his successor. "This is a talented and politically skilled crowd," said a senior Western diplomat in Budapest of the country's new power elite. "What they might do now is wide open...