Word: hards
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...caution of the Old Guard is giving way to the impatience of younger Estonians. They are gambling that the economic crisis of the U.S.S.R. is so severe and so all absorbing for the Kremlin -- and that preserving the goodwill of the outside world is so crucial -- that not even hard-liners will have the stomach for a crackdown. For a while, the Balts may settle for some kind of semiautonomous status in a far looser Soviet confederation. But in these dizzying times, "semi" may become a euphemism for almost total, and "a while" may be a matter...
...anointed heir, Jiang Zemin, a former Shanghai mayor who was named General Secretary in the chaos following the massacre. So far, however, Jiang has had little opportunity to prove his mettle. In fact, even though the Central Committee named Jiang to succeed Deng, it also expanded the powers of hard- line President Yang Shangkun, 82, a Jiang rival. Unlike Jiang, Yang has a national base and a large following in the army...
...Wall the only thing to come tumbling down. Many who served the regime that had built the barrier dropped from power last week. Both East Germany's Cabinet and the Communist Party Politburo resigned en masse, to be replaced by bodies in which reformers mingled with hard-liners. And that, supposedly, was only the start. On the same day that East Germany threw open its borders, Egon Krenz, 52, President and party leader, promised "free, general, democratic and secret elections," though there was no official word as to when. Could the Socialist Unity Party, as the Communists call themselves...
...added, along with Poland and Hungary, to the list of East European states that are trying to abandon orthodox Communism for some as-yet-nebulous form of social democracy. The next to be engulfed by the tides of change appears to be Bulgaria; Todor Zhivkov, 78, its longtime, hard-line boss, unexpectedly resigned at week's end. Outlining the urgent need for "restructuring," his successor, Petar Mladenov, said, "This implies complex and far from foreseeable processes. But there is no alternative." In all of what used to be called the Soviet bloc, Zhivkov's departure leaves in power only Nicolae...
...East Germany the situation came close to spinning out of control. Considered a hard-liner, Krenz succeeded the dour Erich Honecker as party chief only three weeks ago, and eleven days after a state visit by Mikhail Gorbachev. Ever since, Krenz has had to scramble to find concessions that might quiet public turmoil and enable him to hang on to at least a remnant of power. He has been spurred by a series of mass protests -- one demonstration in Leipzig drew some 500,000 East Germans -- demanding democracy and freedoms small and large, and by a fresh wave of flight...