Word: germanism
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Protests also took place in at least eight East German cities yesterday and in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia. As in Prague, the demonstrators demanded democratic reforms but also punishment of recently ousted leaders--Todor Zhivkov in Bulgaria and Erich Honecker in East Germany...
...Soviet empire is disintegrating so quickly and in so many ways that * neither Moscow nor Washington has been able to adjust its policies fast enough to keep up with events. Last week, while the East German regime went into free fall, nationalists in the Estonian parliament prepared to consider a resolution that explicitly challenges the legitimacy of Soviet rule and implicitly raises the possibility of an eventual declaration of independence...
What happened in Berlin last week was a combination of the fall of the Bastille and a New Year's Eve blowout, of revolution and celebration. At the stroke of midnight on Nov. 9, a date that not only Germans would remember, thousands who had gathered on both sides of the Wall let out a roar and started going through it, as well as up and over. West Berliners pulled East Berliners to the top of the barrier along which in years past many an East German had been shot while trying to escape; at times the Wall almost disappeared...
...Soviet Union open prospects for a Europe of cooperation in which the Iron Curtain disappears, people and goods move freely across frontiers, NATO and the Warsaw Pact evolve from military powerhouses into merely formal alliances, and the threat of war steadily fades. They also raise the question of German reunification, an issue for which politicians in the West or, for that matter, Moscow have yet to formulate strategies. Finally, should protest get out of hand, there is the risk of dissolution into chaos, sooner or later necessitating a crackdown and, possibly, a painful turn back to authoritarianism...
...Mikhail Gorbachev. Ever since, Krenz has had to scramble to find concessions that might quiet public turmoil and enable him to hang on to at least a remnant of power. He has been spurred by a series of mass protests -- one demonstration in Leipzig drew some 500,000 East Germans -- demanding democracy and freedoms small and large, and by a fresh wave of flight to the West by many of East Germany's most productive citizens. So far this year, some 225,000 East Germans out of a population of 16 million have voted with their feet, pouring into West...