Word: perestroikas
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...national liberation. But Gorbachev's words in Havana seemed intended to reinforce his professed determination to replace such vaporous ideology with solidly grounded pragmatism -- obtaining influence in Latin America, say, by diplomatic means and not just by Cuban proxy. But as Castro boldly rejected the Moscow model of perestroika and glasnost, Gorbachev bit his tongue and signed a new friendship treaty. The Soviet Union was not about to provoke an immediate change in its close relationship with Cuba...
...overall advance of the Gorbachev cause overseas. It is, of course, domestic imperatives that have forced Gorbachev to readjust, even reconstruct Soviet foreign policy. Henry Trofimenko, a specialist at Moscow's Institute of U.S.A. and Canada Studies, laid the Kremlin's newly realistic approach squarely on three forces: money, perestroika and the need for Western assistance. Said Trofimenko: "First of all, we should spend less money abroad. Second, there should be a concentration of people's efforts on our internal situation. Third, we are trying to improve relations with the West...
True, Gorbachev's temperamental preference is for the practical. But not even Gorbachev would be so eager to reduce expensive commitments beyond his borders if his country were not in such desperate straits. Though a military superpower, the Soviet Union is struggling economically. To make perestroika succeed, Gorbachev cannot afford to squander huge sums of money and material on foreign adventures...
...magazine New Times publishes an interview with Lev Kopelev, a well- known Russian dissident who today supports perestroika from his home in Cologne, then the newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya attacks Kopelev in the best traditions of Stalinist phraseology, explaining in the same breath that Kopelev is a Jew. This recalls the old Russian round-dance game in which one group of dancers sings, "And we the millet have sown and sown . . ." And the other answers, "And we the millet shall trample, trample...
...Well, even so," the correspondent persists, "aren't you thinking of returning to the Soviet Union?" The very posing of the question seems incorrect to me. As long as we are asked such questions, it's clear that we can't talk about any serious perestroika. Why, for example, when the English writer Graham Greene moved to France, didn't anyone ask him whether or not he was planning to return to England? Who cares where Graham Greene lives -- in England or in France? And Hemingway, he lived quite peacefully in Cuba (can you imagine! on an island!) and didn...