Word: gorbachevized
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...longer. Now, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev announces major policy initiatives to the press on a daily, rather than a quintannual, basis. Eastern European nations are stumbling over each other to declare their independence--witness the recent resignation of the entire East German Politburo. At this torrid pace, the Communist Bloc will soon generate more headlines than the Jane Pauley-Today Show feud...
...Once unified by Moscow's tight grip, the countries of Eastern Europe are breaking free unevenly. Poland and Hungary lead the way, East Germany is groping to catch up, and Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Rumania remain far behind. As the participants -- even Gorbachev -- improvise from one day to the next, old alliances are being strained. "Almost overnight," says Adam Bromke of the Polish Academy of Sciences, "all the rivalries and tensions in the bloc that Communist orthodoxy had papered over for decades burst into the open...
...frees Moscow from expensive policing operations and could head off, in Eastern Europe, the sort of protests that plague many of the Soviet republics. East Europeans are far less concerned about a Moscow-initiated crackdown than about a heavy-handed backlash from within the bloc. So is Mikhail Gorbachev. If Czechoslovakia were to launch an anti-opposition campaign, warns Bromke, "it would undermine Gorbachev's prestige at home and in the bloc and make it more difficult for him internationally...
...Perhaps Gorbachev is hoping that the East Europeans will show him the way out of his own domestic morass. If so, he may be disappointed. The key ingredients for change in the Communist world are already well identified, the recipe lifted from a Western cookbook for democracy. Separate Party from State. Add opposition parties and free elections to State. Briskly mix in press, speech and travel freedoms. Top with rights to assemble, strike and form labor unions. Bake in oven turned to Free Enterprise setting. Then hope that the inevitable spillover of chaos -- including the inevitable hard economic times -- doesn...
COVER: As Gorbachev relaxes his grip on Eastern Europe, he proves once and for all that he seeks a different world...