Word: sovietism
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Many of the gains made by the Soviet Union's 70 million Christians have also been enjoyed by the estimated 74 million Christians who live in the six satellite nations. Poland's Communists "have realized that unleashing conflict with the church has been a mistake throughout the past 45 years," says Alojzy Orszulik, the Polish bishops' spokesman. The nation, which remains 95% Catholic, this year became the first in the Soviet bloc to enact a law restoring all basic rights to the churches. Diplomatic relations with the Holy See were established in July. Hungary, also rapidly liberalizing, is 60% Catholic...
...most contentious religious problem within the Soviet Union concerns the 4 million or so Catholics in the western Ukraine, whose plight is a key agenda item in this week's talks between Gorbachev and the Pope. Friendlier contacts, and a papal visit to the U.S.S.R., cannot occur unless this, the world's largest underground religious community, is restored. Under Stalin, all Ukrainian Catholic bishops were imprisoned and a fraudulent 1946 synod dissolved their jurisdictions, handing over 4,100 churches to Russian Orthodoxy. The majority of the Catholic priests rejected the takeover and either were arrested or went into hiding...
Mindful that his get-together with the Soviet leader will take place at a time of extraordinary upheaval in Eastern Europe, Bush has mused privately and publicly about the "historic" nature of the encounter. Flying back from Memphis aboard Air Force One on the day before Thanksgiving, he wondered aloud if the meeting might help guarantee "a peaceful future for kids all over," including his eleven grandchildren. Then, in a televised address that evening, the President struck what was for him a visionary tone. He invited Gorbachev to "work with me to bring down the last barriers...
...probability that such steps will be taken, if not at Malta then soon thereafter, was enhanced by developments in Washington. In recent weeks feuding between anti-Soviet hard-liners like Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and moderates led by Secretary of State James Baker, who favor a more active U.S. role in helping perestroika succeed, has been decisively resolved in the moderates' favor. Whether by conviction or coercion, Cheney has lately been cooing like a dove. By ordering the Pentagon to cut as much as $180 billion from its projected spending plans through 1995, Cheney indicated that Washington is ready...
...most conservative Cabinet members announce liberal-sounding policy changes that could anger the Republican right. It thus fell to Cheney to disclose that the Pentagon is examining conventional-weapons cuts that would go beyond Bush's plan, unveiled at last May's NATO summit, to reduce U.S. and Soviet forces to 275,000 each. Some Pentagon officials are worried that the talk about reducing defense spending could, in the words of one, give some allies "a green light for their own cuts...