Word: pacts
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Earlier in the week, events had seemed to be moving inexorably toward a possible Warsaw Pact intervention. The official East German news agency announced that fresh troops, tanks and armored cars had been sent to join the three-week-old Warsaw Pact maneuvers in and around Poland. Pravda, meanwhile, charged that "the opponents of socialism" were pushing Poland "toward a counterrevolutionary path." Then came the news that Leonid Brezhnev would personally attend the 16th Czechoslovak Party Congress in Prague-an extraordinary announcement, since the ailing 74-year-old Soviet President had not ventured abroad for such a meeting since...
...able "to give a fitting rebuff to the designs of the enemies of the socialist system." The statement seemed to offer Warsaw's leaders one more chance to restore order on their own. Shortly after the speech came another hopeful sign: TASS announced the end of the Warsaw Pact maneuvers...
...armed resistance from the Polish population and even from units of the conscript-based armed forces. "The Poles will not stand aside as the Czechs did in 1968," predicts a Bonn Kremlinologist. Though open resistance would eventually be subdued by Moscow's overwhelming might, the myth of Warsaw Pact unity would be forever destroyed, and underground rebellion might smolder on for years. Even short of that, the Soviets would have to assume responsibility for Poland's $27 billion foreign debt and its faltering economy, all in the face of almost certain industrial sabotage, mass strikes and boycotts. Finally...
From the Kremlin's point of view, there is still a strong case for intervention. A primary consideration is military. If Poland ever seemed likely to secede from the Warsaw Pact, cutting off Moscow's vital rail links and supply lines to East Germany, Soviet tanks could be expected to roll in immediately. Ideological factors could prove equally persuasive. Even before the outbreak of labor unrest last summer, Poland showed some dangerous deviations from Communist orthodoxy: a strong Catholic Church, private ownership of 75% of the country's farm land, a flourishing dissident movement. Then, the birth...
Though Church stumped the pit heads from Springfield, Ill., to Pittsburgh to push the pact, the union rebuffed it by a vote of more than 2 to 1. Many members argued that provisions in the contract gave mine operators power to lease coal property to nonunion companies as well as skimp on contributions to pension funds. On the other hand, industry officials seemed to feel that the rejection simply reflected the union's weakening grasp its members. Said one: "Facts had nothing to do with it. Rationality went out the window. What developed was emotion, suspicion and misinformation...