Word: blocs
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Whether Milosevic manages to retain control in Serbia's parliament in upcoming elections may determine whether the Yugoslav federation shatters. With a governing bloc, he could more easily press territorial claims against Croatia and grudges against Slovenia. Disintegration was not Poland's problem, and Walesa, despite his affection for Poland's prewar dictator, Marshal Jozef Pilsudski, strikes few people as a Volk-glorifying Fuhrer. But in trouncing candidate-come-lately Stanislaw Tyminski, a returned emigre who offered a form of national salvation as easy as a drug trip, Walesa himself could not quite shake off charges of pandering to emotions...
What price freedom? The question on the lips of East Europeans a year ago seemed to have been answered when communist dictatorships gave way one after another without offering more than token resistance. The startling disintegration of the East bloc registered a 7, maybe an 8, on a Richter scale of this century's most significant events, yet the bill for half a dozen revolutions seemed exceedingly modest. The cost of erasing the 45-year-old political division of Europe and opening the way toward democratic pluralism and free-market economies: a few hundred killed, mainly in Romania...
...last-ditch compromise aimed at creating unanimity on the City Council failed last night, when the body's conservative bloc broke ranks with liberals and the business community to vote against a temporary freeze on new commercial parking spaces in the city...
...into a sharp appreciation for the role of public opinion in postcommunist Estonia. She first dipped into politics in 1987 and learned her new craft chiefly by championing environmental issues, which have become a pivot for political rebellion, providing an entree into politics for a surprising number of East bloc women. In the spring of 1988 she became one of the founders of the rebellious Popular Front of Estonia, and her expertise in using the mass media helped propel the movement into a formidable force that convinced Estonians they could break with Moscow...
Until times are better in the old East bloc, few women will be able to muster the energy or time to compete with men. The economic realities of Eastern Europe's revolution are sobering for all, but especially for women: faster than anyone, they are losing their jobs, their social services, their economic independence. As conservative values are revived, the rights to abortion and divorce, for example, are coming under increasing fire. Yet women themselves often share that conservatism: communism never really erased traditional family values from their countries...