Word: sovietism
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Bush had to choose between the success of Gorbachev's program to reform the Soviet Union and the fulfillment of West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl's plan to create a German "federation," the President would almost certainly pick perestroika, since that is what is driving the new Soviet foreign policy. On this issue, Malta was an exercise in private commiseration and public obfuscation. With Bush at his side at their joint press conference, Gorbachev said that "history" should be allowed to determine the status of the two Germanys, and he warned against any "artificial acceleration" of the "process of change...
...lines of one of two antinuke motorboats trying to disrupt the test. "A terrible outrage . . . an unbridled act of aggression!" cried Greenpeace's executive director as the group prepared legal action against the Navy. Just | outside the launch area, the battle -- and the test-firing -- were monitored by a Soviet trawler bristling with electronic equipment...
George Bush normally distrusts "big moments," and this one did not last long. His chummy session with Mikhail Gorbachev in Malta restored momentum to U.S.-Soviet relations and gave a boost to what Bush called his "new thinking" about the changes in the Communist world. Yet the President had barely left his joint press conference with Gorbachev when he encountered serious questions about his plans to encourage perestroika and to deliver on his promises in time...
...Even the Soviets were flashing warning signs. Armed forces Chief of Staff Mikhail Moiseyev said the Soviet leadership should make no further concessions to the U.S., and noted pointedly that there are still too many disagreements to conclude a strategic-arms treaty by June. Gorbachev and Bush would have to meet again just to hash out these differences, said Moiseyev...
That kind of concession displeases conservatives, who say the Soviets should suffer through their economic and political crises without American assistance. The White House dispatched Vice President Dan Quayle to disarm the hard-liners even before Bush left Europe. Quayle uttered anachronistic noises to the Washington Post, including a nostalgic reference to the Soviet Union as a "totalitarian state." If Quayle's partial retraction a few days later -- he changed the description to "authoritarian" -- seemed to blur the Administration's view even more, that was part of the game. Behind the scenes, White House officials reminded conservatives that the overtures...