Word: czechoslovakia
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...open. Invoking a bilateral agreement, the East Berlin regime demanded that Budapest return the refugees. The Hungarians refused, allowing 15,000 East Germans in three days to go to West Germany, where they received automatic citizenship. East Germany halted travel to Hungary. Would-be immigrants then poured into Czechoslovakia to take refuge in the West German embassy there...
Shibboleths in the West were evaporating almost as fast as regimes in the East. It had long been a tenet of conventional wisdom that Czechoslovakia, the homeland of the Good Soldier Schweik, would be one of the last nations to join the march of freedom. Maybe, just maybe there would be another Prague Spring in 1990. But the thaw came in the fall instead. Demonstrations began in mid- November. The first was a legal assembly of students sponsored by the communist-dominated Socialist Union of Youth. But that organization was seething with discontent, and 3,000 of the marchers moved...
...Marxist, but even more as Russian, a double affront to the proud nationalism of countries that believed the West ended at Poland's eastern frontier. Once it became clear that Gorbachev meant what he said, the opposition -- tightly organized as in Poland or inchoate as in East Germany and Czechoslovakia -- rose up in wrath. Without the backing of the Soviet army, local satraps dared not use their security forces and probably did not know if they could trust them. The communist parties tried to buy off the people with leadership shuffles and semireforms, but that was not the point. Communist...
...every case -- Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia -- a disbelieving but increasingly hopeful world watched and waited for a crackdown that never came. In every case, the disintegration of the communist system was hastened by economic crises. Marx was right: politics is driven by economics. But his 20th century followers were spectacularly wrong. A command economy can grow only by exploiting farmers and workers; eventually there is no incentive for the workers to work or the farmers to farm in a society in which they have no say in the allocation of resources. Giving them a say means giving them...
...They are fledglings, with no established economic or commercial systems, and even with help from Western governments and corporations, it is not certain they all will succeed. Their work should be eased by large newly formed national-unity coalitions such as New Forum in East Germany, Civic Forum in Czechoslovakia and the Union of Democratic Forces in Bulgaria. Still, it is possible that after 40 years of Marxism ordinary workers will view the profit motive with hostility and insist that the government owes them a living. If that is the case, increasing penury could push Eastern Europe back into...