Word: poland
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Springtime of Nations, as the 1848 events were known, was a chain reaction of democratic revolutions that erupted against the autocratic rule of hereditary monarchs and in favor of democracy. It began in Paris and spread south to Italy and east to Poland. Crowds gathered in major European cities, including Berlin, Prague, Budapest and Vienna demanding an end to the regimes imposed on them three decades earlier by the victorious kings, emperors and statesmen in the great European war that Napoleon Bonaparte unleashed...
...however, important and auspicious differences between 1848 and 1989. In 1848 multinational empires dominated Europe. The revolutionaries wanted to dismember them, but could not agree on where the new boundaries should be drawn. Such questions as how far Germany should extend and whether there should be an independent Poland provoked heated debate and considerable bloodshed well into the 20th century. Now they have been settled. At issue this year is not the location of Europe's borders but simply whether Communist or democratic governments should exercise power within them...
...imagine a Soviet intervention in East Germany, where the Soviets have a lot of troops on the ground and therefore on the spot. If the East German Communist regime were to collapse through violence and if the Soviets were to remain passive, then the whole thing would collapse, in Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. The Soviets know that if they let go of East Germany, Poland is lost...
Admitting that it was relatively easy to change the constitution and restore democracy in a small country like Hungary, Jeszenszky said the economic challenge faced by East European nations was formidable but not impossible. "Miracles cannot be expected," he warned, with specific reference to Poland. Nonetheless, he urged the creation of "small islands of prosperity" in the reforming economies of Eastern Europe that would be attractive examples and inspire imitation. "A few years ago, people in Hungary were pessimistic," he said. "They thought reforms brought only inflation and trouble. But now, and in East Germany and Czechoslovakia as well...
Eastern Europe, Jeszenszky suggested, had already found a political form that made dramatic economic restructuring possible: the "grand national coalition," modeled on the government in Warsaw. "Poland's Solidarity movement set the pattern," he said, comparing loose non-Communist political groupings in Hungary, East Germany and Czechoslovakia to national coalitions formed in Western Europe after World War II. "We are emerging from 40 years of war against the people. Changes have to be made -- economic, political and moral ones. These new governments soon will have to make unpopular decisions, so it's best to have governments credible to all parties...