Word: gorbachev
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...Gorbachev's turn to the right has been accelerating for several months. Some analysts date it from last October, when he lost the support of the country's liberals by backing away from the radical 500-day economic-reform plan put forward by his former adviser Stanislav Shatalin. It became obvious that he was relying on the security apparatus to enforce Moscow's will and was handing over the future of perestroika to the party and its military-industrial complex. While those power centers are still strong, they are also the most interested in preserving the status...
Ironically, it was the success of his efforts to democratize the political order that ultimately pushed Gorbachev hardest. Six years, ago Paul Goble, a leading expert on Soviet nationalities and now a State Department adviser, wrote that Gorbachev would eventually discover he could make liberalism work in Russia, but that a significantly liberalized union of 15 republics was a contradiction in terms. "Like Lincoln before him," says a senior U.S. analyst in Washington, "Gorbachev has decided that he doesn't want to preside over the dissolution of his own country." By opting to hold on to the union, Gorbachev chose...
...Soviet President has immense powers on paper but little ability to rule in the separatist regions. Legvold predicts that "Gorbachev will try to sit on these people through ((Defense Minister)) Yazov. He wants it to be with as little recrimination from abroad and as little mayhem in the area as possible." After Lithuania, any republic that does not knuckle under to Moscow could feel the fist next...
...Though Gorbachev has proved wondrously skilled at skipping between right and left in the past, it is no longer certain that the architect of perestroika could turn back now if he wanted to. Each step on the road to coercion and dictatorship takes him farther from former allies who might offer him a way back to reform. He might still harbor a vision of a peaceful, democratized Soviet Union. But he has not been able to find either the determination or the right time to bestow true freedom of choice on his country and all its people...
...Wednesday Bush and Baker notified congressional leaders, ambassadors of allies and others that the attack was coming that night; former President Richard Nixon was told around noon. Baker called Alexander Bessmertnykh, the new Soviet Foreign Minister, in Moscow an hour before the assault. Bessmertnykh immediately told President Mikhail Gorbachev, who telephoned Bush to propose a final Soviet warning to its former ally to get out of Kuwait or else. Bush had no objection, so Gorbachev composed a letter that the Soviet ambassador to Baghdad was instructed to deliver to Saddam immediately. Too late. The ambassador could not find the Iraqi...