Word: leaders
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...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 in East Germany, lose in such balloting? "Theoretically," replied Gunter Schabowski, the East Berlin party boss and a Politburo member...
...excessive force as a tragedy. They refused to accept that; they insisted on calling it an "incident." In part, this may be because the Chinese word for tragedy implies that there must be a villain. As one close Chinese friend pointed out to me, no proud Chinese leader -- indeed, no national leader anywhere -- can ever admit that he is a villain. One top Chinese leader told me that any colleague who humiliated China in the world community by acting contrite did not deserve to be in office. Contrition may be an attractive characteristic in soap-opera stars...
...Assuming that the cold war is over and that the Soviet Union is not a major threat to either of us -- a conclusion, incidentally, that every Chinese leader I met rejects -- we still have a strong strategic interest in restoring a good relationship with the P.R.C. President Bush will go head-to-head with Gorbachev in the Mediterranean on Dec. 2. Gorbachev is not a closet democrat, a philanthropist or a fool. His handshake will be warm, but based on his past record we can assume that he will have a card or two up his sleeve. We should never...
...slimmer ten-member body, was far more pointed, since that is where the real power lies. Some of its more notorious hard-liners got the ax, including Stoph; Erich Mielke, head of the despised state security apparatus; and Kurt Hager, chief party ideologist. Hans Modrow, 61, the Dresden party leader, was named to the Politburo and will be Premier in the new government. He has been likened alternately to Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, the reformist thorn in the Soviet President's side. Some conservatives, however, remain in the reshaped Politburo, and the way Krenz rammed his slate through the Central...
...initial reforms, in any case, did not satisfy the opposition. "Dialogue is not the main course, it is just the appetizer," proclaimed Jens Reich, a molecular biologist and leader of New Forum, the major dissident organization. Founded only in September, it claims 200,000 adherents and has just been recognized by the government, which originally declared it illegal. The opposition pledged to keep up the pressure for a free press, free elections and a new constitution stripped of the clause granting the Communist Party a monopoly on power...