Word: pacts
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...wouldn't be difficult. Difficult would be cutting Poland free from the strangling grasp of the Warsaw Pact. Difficult would be resuscitating the Polish economy after years of stale communist leadership. Difficult would be restoring Polish self-confidence after a half-century of subjugation...
...August 23, 1939, Germany and Russia signed a pact that included a secret agreement to partition eastern Europe, including Poland, between them. A few weeks after signing the agreement, the Red Army rolled into a Poland already prostrate from the German blitzkrieg. The Soviets deported thousands of Poles--including 14,500 officers--to Russian labor camps. Their motives are not difficult to discern; they wished to short-circuit any future Polish leadership...
...capitalist nation. To open its borders, Budapest suspended key paragraphs of a 1969 bilateral treaty between Hungary and East Germany that forbids the unauthorized passage of citizens of either country into third countries. Budapest's bold maneuver provided the West with a vivid glimpse of fractures within the Warsaw Pact -- and raised unnerving questions about the refugee tide that might ensue if the Iron Curtain was completely dismantled...
...very difficult and very unusual situation. Hungary, along with Poland, is the most enthusiastic East- bloc supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms. Moreover, Gorbachev has pledged noninterference in East European affairs. At the same time, Gorbachev does not want to preside over the collapse of the Warsaw Pact. Moscow's unease may in part explain the arrival of Soviet Politburo Member Yegor Ligachev in East Berlin last week. Moscow said the trip was long planned, but there was little doubt that the presence of Ligachev, a hard-liner known for his resistance to Gorbachev's reforms, could not help reassuring...
Hungary's open-door policy further fractures the Warsaw Pact. Meanwhile, back in Honecker land, there are feelings of frustration with an aging dictatorship. -- Are Russians the victims of discrimination in the Baltic states...