Word: east
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Deceit. Terror. The compulsion to perfect an impossible master plan. Nazi Germany's plunge into madness may have convulsed Europe, but Imperial Japan had set out on the same course eight years earlier in East Asia. The war there was already raging in September 1939, and no end was in sight...
...National self-strengthening took on fanatical proportions. The state religion built around animist Shinto beliefs was transformed into full-fledged emperor worship. And despite shortages in food and electricity due to the military allocations, the Empire of the Rising Sun believed it was destined to shine over all of East Asia. "Manchuria alone is not enough," wrote navy Lieut. Commander Tota Ishimaru in 1936. "With it alone Japan cannot...
...chief last Tuesday apparently came down to this: Go with the flow. Within hours the Communists' belligerent demands for a greater role in Warsaw's as yet unformed government were replaced by conciliatory calls for "partner-like cooperation" with Solidarity. The arduous and uncharted process of piecing together the East bloc's first non-Communist government was back on track...
...bloc uniformity seems to have given way to a breathless rush of uneven developments. In Hungary, where a multiparty system is in the works, Communist Party chief Karoly Grosz reportedly announced that < he was prepared to step down, a move that was interpreted as a victory for reformers. In East Germany the government sought to rid itself of malcontents by handing out unprecedented numbers of exit permits, while thousands of other unhappy citizens simply fled over the Hungarian border. In Poland the Communist Party Politburo marked the 50th anniversary of the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact -- whose secret protocols resulted...
Energized and emboldened by Gorbachev's daring reform campaign, many East Europeans are setting out to draw new conclusions from old lessons. If most Communist countries share a perception of the political and economic forces that have brought them to this juncture, they lack a common vision of where they are going. Acknowledged Solidarity leader Lech Walesa: "Nobody has previously taken the road that leads from socialism to capitalism." Poland and Hungary are pressing ahead with sweeping reforms that promise to disprove the theory that totalitarian regimes cannot change. Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Bulgaria tinker with old formulas in hopes...