Word: gorbachevized
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...statement did not urge any specific steps for bringing the Baltic states into line, but its ominous tone came as a shock to Soviet liberals. With Mikhail Gorbachev out of Moscow on vacation last week, many wondered if the virulent anti-Baltic onslaught was yet another maneuver by conservative forces to discredit the Soviet leader's political reforms...
Only Mikhail Gorbachev and Mieczyslaw Rakowski know precisely what was said during their 40-minute telephone conversation. But the gist of the Soviet leader's advice to the Polish Communist Party chief last Tuesday apparently came down to this: Go with the flow. Within hours the Communists' belligerent demands for a greater role in Warsaw's as yet unformed government were replaced by conciliatory calls for "partner-like cooperation" with Solidarity. The arduous and uncharted process of piecing together the East bloc's first non-Communist government was back on track...
Energized and emboldened by Gorbachev's daring reform campaign, many East Europeans are setting out to draw new conclusions from old lessons. If most Communist countries share a perception of the political and economic forces that have brought them to this juncture, they lack a common vision of where they are going. Acknowledged Solidarity leader Lech Walesa: "Nobody has previously taken the road that leads from socialism to capitalism." Poland and Hungary are pressing ahead with sweeping reforms that promise to disprove the theory that totalitarian regimes cannot change. Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Bulgaria tinker with old formulas in hopes...
...members scramble to cut separate deals with the West. And the allies are at one another's throats: the Czechs and Rumanians denounce the Polish reformers for sowing chaos, the Poles denounce the Czechs for trampling human rights, the Hungarians denounce the Rumanians for mistreating their Hungarian minority. Gorbachev's phone conversation with Rakowski last week suggests that the Soviet leader finds better promise in an uncharted future than in a failed past. But if Eastern Europe's summer of hope gives way to a winter of discontent, Gorbachev's go- with-the-flow optimism may bump up against...
...Soviet Union and defining the rights and obligations of its republics. "Recent events," said the proposal, show "a need for radical transformations in the Soviet federation." Specifics are to be discussed at a special Central Committee plenum next month. It will be another risky venture for President Mikhail Gorbachev, aimed at resolving the nationalities problem without curtailing his reform program -- or his hold on power...