Word: unionizers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...truth, it was the Soviet Union that was in a very difficult and very unusual situation. Hungary, along with Poland, is the most enthusiastic East- bloc supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms. Moreover, Gorbachev has pledged noninterference in East European affairs. At the same time, Gorbachev does not want to preside over the collapse of the Warsaw Pact. Moscow's unease may in part explain the arrival of Soviet Politburo Member Yegor Ligachev in East Berlin last week. Moscow said the trip was long planned, but there was little doubt that the presence of Ligachev, a hard-liner known...
Germany was conquered, then divided into two states designed to remain forever in a state of permanent, if cold, antagonism. Pax Americana and Pax Sovietica solved the German problem. To put it another way, the first achievement of NATO is that it contained the Soviet Union. The second achievement, underappreciated now but not for long, is that with the collaboration of the Soviet Union, it solved the German problem...
Russians suffering discrimination in the Soviet Union? It sounds about as likely as the English becoming second-class citizens in parts of Great Britain. But that is how many of the 30 million Russians feel who live in the U.S.S.R.'s restive "ethnic republics" like Moldavia, the Ukraine and the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. In the throes of a quest for their own independence, nationalists in those areas are denouncing the Russians living among them as "occupiers" and "migrants." They are enacting voting laws that disenfranchise many Russians and are forcing them to learn the local languages...
...plant, explained that new strikes could pretty well close down Estonia. "The republic's railroads, airports, seaports and power systems are all run by Russians," he pointed out. In Moldavia recent strikes by Russians left tomatoes rotting in fields and railroad cars standing empty at stations, worsening the Soviet Union's food shortages...
Gorbachev had once hoped to make the Baltic states a showcase for perestroika. But he now faces a painful dilemma. If he allows the nationalist movements to run unchecked, he risks worsening ethnic tensions on top of all the Soviet Union's other problems. But if he cracks down, he will hearten the enemies, who are already making rich political capital out of the discrimination against Russians. The Soviet leader met with Baltic party and government officials last week to seek some compromise of their demands. This week's oft-postponed plenum may show if he has found...