Word: gorbachevized
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These developments -- and the gleeful speed with which Poland, Hungary, East Germany and Czechoslovakia have guillotined the Communist monopoly -- must make Mikhail Gorbachev feel like the sorcerer's apprentice. Unable to control the rising flood of reforms he has conjured up, he is finding it harder to keep afloat...
...Gorbachev, who has called a multiparty system "rubbish," has good reason to worry. Many non-Russians in the Soviet empire -- Ukrainians and Azerbaijanis as well as Armenians and Balts -- would flock to new parties seeking autonomy from Moscow. The Baltic republics already sport popular fronts and other freshly minted political groups whose members ran as independent candidates in national elections earlier this year and trounced establishment party hacks. In the Russian Republic itself, there is mounting anger and frustration with empty shops and suffocating bureaucracy that could easily swell the rolls of a gaggle of independent parties. Politburo member Yegor...
...Gorbachev also contends that the future of well-managed reform depends on the party continuing to run the show, an argument that would surely bring a smile to the face of just deposed East German party leader Egon Krenz. "Preserving the vanguard role for the party, from our point of view, is extremely necessary, especially in the time of perestroika," insists candidate Politburo member Yevgeni Primakov. "The party is the only consolidating force in our society, and in our federation...
...litmus test of the leadership's commitment to genuine progress. They have substantial support. The Supreme Soviet voted 198 to 173 last month to debate Article 6; only 28 abstentions kept the measure off the agenda of this week's session of the Congress of People's Deputies. Gorbachev recognizes that "the rates of perestroika in the party have thus far been slower than those in society, which makes it difficult for the party to carry out its leading role." If Gorbachev wants to keep the liberals' engine hitched to his reform train, a revamped Article 6 must be part...
...attack from within. Last month the leaders of Leningrad's Communist Party arranged an unprecedented demonstration to criticize Moscow for not defending the party against glasnost-inspired attacks. If this outburst reflects apparatchik sentiment, legalizing competitive groups would arouse not only outrage but perhaps a concerted effort to oust Gorbachev. The Leningrad protest provoked a countermarch by some 40,000 incensed citizens who proclaimed their support for Gorbachev's efforts to rejuvenate the party through open criticism...