Word: communistic
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Although Gaullists and Communists join forces to vote no, a narrow majority in the National Assembly approves Rocard's request to rule by decree for six months. Drastic reforms are instituted almost instantly. Rocard does not nationalize vast sectors of industry, as the 1972 Socialist-Communist "common program" calls for. Instead, all stock in private companies is converted to bonds, and shareholders are guaranteed 15% of profits; but corporate control passes to the workers. France's Paris-centered government is decentralized with the creation of new regional assemblies with broad local powers, including taxation. Welfare benefits are increased...
Some believe that an outsider will be eaten alive by the Vatican bureaucracy. But those who have observed Wojtyla's career know that he is no pushover. He knows the art of byzantine maneuver and long-range tactics, having learned it in confrontation with a Communist bureaucracy at least as formidable as that at the Vatican. He has already thrown the Curia off balance, in fact, by failing so far to reappoint all major officials, as is customary. On Saturday the Pope addressed the Vatican press corps, then to the consternation of his aides waded into the throng...
Political observers will of course be watching the new Pope's every move in relation to the Communist nations. But he is not likely to change the general lines set by Pope Paul. In the long run it may be far more significant that the Pope is a non-Italian, and that he has lived in a relatively impoverished land, than that he comes from the Soviet bloc...
...white smoke that heralded his election also signaled a new and unpredictable phase in religious geopolitics, for Wojtyla is the first Pope to come from a nation under Communist rule. The Cardinals insisted with one voice that they had selected their new leader without intending to set any political line, indeed without even taking time to weigh the ramifications. To be sure, the election came quickly, on the second day and eighth ballot of voting. Still, because of the implications for relations not only with Moscow but also with the powerful Italian Communist Party, few observers had thought that...
...Moscow and the capitals of Eastern Europe other than Poland, the official welcome was wary and tepid. In most Communist countries, -there was a telling hiatus of several hours before the party-lining press and radio broke the news. But Peking, which has yet to announce the U.S. moon landings, broadcast the news quickly. Most Communist organs reported the election matter of factly. Soviet Boss Leonid Brezhnev issued a belated pro forma wish for "friendship and peace between peoples...