Word: deng
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Gorbachev has not always been a champion of the kind of people power on display in Tiananmen Square. Early in his tenure as General Secretary, his understanding of democracy was closer to Deng's concept of limited managerial and entrepreneurial liberalization. However, the Soviet leader grew to realize that as long as the Communist Party maintains its grip on all aspects of society, significant reform is nearly impossible. The party is too conservative, too resistant to change. At the time of the 1917 Revolution, the party was the agent of cataclysmic change -- but on behalf of a conspiratorial elite...
...Deng also made himself vulnerable to the supreme, and probably final, irony of his roller-coaster career. He carefully, patiently, skillfully set the scene for Gorbachev to visit China two weeks ago. The Soviet leader was coming on Deng's terms to end the 30-year schism between the Communist giants. Yet not only was this diplomatic triumph overshadowed by the more spectacular events in Tiananmen Square, but the demonstrators there carried banners in Russian demanding glasnost and saying IN THE SOVIET UNION THEY HAVE GORBACHEV. IN CHINA, WE HAVE WHOM...
...Deng Xiaoping's predecessor Mao Zedong split with Gorbachev's predecessor Nikita Khrushchev partly on the grounds that Khrushchev was a "revisionist." Gorbachev has gone a long way toward healing the rift, but not by returning to orthodoxy. He has carried revisionism to a level unimagined by either Mao or Khrushchev, and as a result his picture and slogans are on the posters of Chinese demonstrators...
...want, since it could make him the protagonist in a tragedy. If glasnost and democratizatsiya seem to be tearing the Soviet Union apart, Gorbachev may be in the position of having either to order a crackdown himself or to yield to a successor who would do so. He, like Deng, may yet discover that starting a counterrevolution is far easier than determining where it leads...
With the importance of images fading, temporarily at least, there was little in the way of solid analysis. After declaring martial law on nationwide TV, Premier Li Peng was not seen in public for five days; Deng Xiaoping and party leader Zhao Ziyang, the other key players in the power struggle, remained out of sight even longer. During this period of uncertainty, solid information was the scarcest of commodities in China, and wild rumors abounded. There were even reports that Deng was fleeing into retirement in the U.S. Protesters in Shanghai, Xian and Lanzhou staged memorial services for Beijing hunger...