Word: perestroika
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...claiming he is responding to pleas from nameless patriots to protect the socialist revolution from fascists. To bolster those lies he is also moving to reintroduce censorship. It was no accident that 15 unarmed protesters died defending Lithuania's television center. Glasnost, which has succeeded, is as endangered as perestroika, which...
That view was reflected even more strongly in an Izvestia article by Georgi Arbatov, the noted Americanologist and former Gorbachev adviser. He warned that opponents of perestroika "have tried to exploit natural discontent and worry to turn the clock back. They are trying to blackmail our parliament, politicians and even the President." If so, the principal blackmail victim was proving no mean shakedown artist himself...
...possible that Shevardnadze's resignation will give Gorbachev a salutary shock that will arrest any further drift to the right. But it is equally possible that it will accentuate such a drift by removing one of the last and most eloquent advocates of perestroika from Gorbachev's inner circle. Among a parade of speakers to the Congress podium after Shevardnadze's speech, Vladimir Chernyak, a Ukrainian economist, gave a new twist to warnings of a coup: "At the head of the coup stands Gorbachev. It's possible he himself doesn't know it. By demanding for himself more and more...
Chernyak hit on a central irony. While Gorbachev seems to be relying more and more on the army, KGB and other conservatives to buttress his presidential powers and save what remains of perestroika, the right seems convinced that it can do very well without Gorbachev. Many of its members regard him with open contempt as a leader who has reduced the Soviet Union, once a proud superpower, to literal beggary, making it dependent on food and other economic aid from the West...
Partly at Shevardnadze's urging, the West has placed all its hopes for a new world order on Gorbachev. French and German authorities last week even urged that aid be accelerated, arguing that at this critical time for the survival of perestroika Gorbachev needs all the help he can get. But what if the next figure to follow Shevardnadze to a podium and announce that a triumphant right has left him no choice but to resign were Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev...