Word: postcommunist
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...MILOSEVIC AS HITLER Well, not exactly. Milosevic is the most dangerous European leader of the 1990s. He is a menace, a thug, a postcommunist villain who has cynically manipulated nationalism. He has blood on his hands. But his state does not have either the power or the ideological will to conquer Europe. While Germany under Hitler grew ever bigger, Yugoslavia under Milosevic has shrunk. The element of truth in this analogy is President Clinton's point about appeasement: the longer you put off standing up to aggressive dictators, the higher the price. If we had called Hitler's bluff when...
...then there's Lech Walesa. Those who wonder why there aren't more women on the list should consider the fate of Hanna Suchocka, the first female Prime Minister of Poland--or of any postcommunist state. It was Walesa who derailed her political career, stating, "I can't see a woman above me"--then adding, to the appreciative laughter of the press corps, "Sometimes, maybe...
...Eastern Europe, the key to rapid growth is economic reform--the more radical, the better. Countries that have wholeheartedly embraced capitalism and privatization of state industry, like Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia, will see 4% to 5% expansion this year and next. Russia, where the problems of postcommunist transition are worse, will show 1% growth in 1997--but that is miraculous after the ruin of the past. In 1998, DRI/McGraw-Hill forecasts, Russian growth will...
Russia today is a postcommunist, not a democratic society--and that is partly Yeltsin's fault. He is the only politician of sufficient stature in the post-Soviet period who could have created an "anticommunist" party committed to reform. Instead he chose a politics of charisma, believing his populist appeal would be more effective in ensuring support for reform than would the enlistment of local activists to promote his views. By allowing reform to become identified with one powerful personality--his own--Yeltsin failed to create a constituency for change that could survive if he became unpopular. And now that...
Doubts remain, though the President-elect resigned from the Social Democrats in a move to broaden his support. Osiatynski worries that most of the postcommunist countries have yet to adopt a constitution and laws that can protect against a return of totalitarianism. Says he: "Now communists are back in power and have control over a great part of capitalism and the state. That is very...