Word: perestroika
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...American advice to wait and see did not sit well with the West Europeans, who could see how Gorbachev was transforming their continent. Meanwhile, East European reformers argued to Bush that the success of their own programs depended on the continuation of perestroika, and Eduard Shevardnadze convinced Baker that perestroika depended on Gorbachev's ability to control the change without resorting to a violent crackdown...
Four months later Shevardnadze was named Foreign Minister and Gorbachev's partner in perestroika. The appointment struck the world's chanceries as odd -- the Georgian was a provincial politician with no experience in world affairs -- and as an indication that Gorbachev intended to be his own Foreign Minister. That assessment was wrong. In reality, the two planned together to tame the country's adventurist foreign policy and make it the servant of domestic needs...
When Shevardnadze arrived at the Stalin-gothic Foreign Ministry on Smolensky Square, he treated it as a candidate for cleanup. After 28 years under the proprietorship of dour-visaged Andrei Gromyko, the ministry badly needed perestroika and glasnost. Within a year Shevardnadze replaced nine of the 12 deputy ministers, instituted a daily press briefing, and created departments for disarmament and economic relations with the West...
...Administration is in a delicate position as it tries to bolster Gorbachev's standing at the very moment when the Soviet President seems to be retreating from democratic reform. "I want perestroika to succeed," Bush declared flatly. But Shevardnadze acknowledged a "certain instability" in Soviet society, igniting fears that a bad winter could prompt a retreat to more authoritarian tactics. Gorbachev recently appointed hard-liner Boris Pugo as Interior Minister and enlisted the KGB to crack down on black marketeers, whom some in the West view as the Soviet Union's fledgling entrepreneurs...
...string of announcements came amid signs that conservatives in the party and armed services, long on the defensive, have finally found an audience among a public that increasingly associates perestroika with long lines and empty shops. Faced with mounting criticism and declining popularity, Gorbachev may have decided that he has no choice but to loosen the reins on the KGB and military. Says Amy Knight, a Soviet-affairs analyst at the U.S. Library of Congress: "He is resorting to authoritarian, coercive measures because he is losing his ability to use more legitimate powers...