Word: glasnost
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...ammunition for its critics. But two new books -- The New Emperors: China in the Era of Mao and Deng by Harrison E. Salisbury (Little, Brown; 544 pages; $24.95) and The Claws of the Dragon: Kang Sheng by John Byron and Robert Pack (Simon & Schuster; 560 pages; $27.50) -- indicate that glasnost is coming, inexorably, to Beijing. They provide the most detailed and personal accounts so far of the chaos, cruelty and corruption that Mao Zedong's reign inflicted on the nation...
...glasnost is coming to Beijing, can demokratizatsia be far behind? Salisbury does not see it. Deng, a "moderate" and pragmatist, was willing to shed as much blood as necessary to put down the Tiananmen Square democracy movement in 1989. His position, like Mao's, was "if he saw himself challenged, he was bound to destroy the challenger." The next emperor, Salisbury predicts, will probably be as pragmatic as Deng. But like Deng he will hold tightly to power and will be ready to order China, as emperors did in dynasties past, "Obey -- and tremble...
...neither Reagan nor the Pope could anticipate the accession of a Soviet leader like Mikhail Gorbachev, the father of glasnost and perestroika; his efforts at reform unleashed powerful forces that spun out of his control and led to the breakup of the Soviet Union. The Washington-Vatican alliance "didn't cause the fall of communism," observes a U.S. official familiar with the details of the plot to keep Solidarity alive. "Like all great and lucky leaders, the Pope and the President exploited the forces of history to their own ends...
However, Khanga said, "After glasnost, the press became the watchdogs of the government. We became the heroes of the people...
...changes, I never praised him while he was in office -- a poet must not praise a czar, even a good one. But now I will say that this great man, one of the men of the century, turned around global consciousness, broke the back of totalitarianism and gave us glasnost...