Word: western
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...artistic and literary confreres, Havel would have been the first to laugh. But as the most prominent figure in Prague's rapidly coalescing opposition, Havel has rocketed to near cult status. "I am a writer and human rights activist, not a politician," insisted Havel. But as a Western diplomat in Prague put it, "Unlikely but true, he's the Lech Walesa of Prague...
...Jericho. More than any other event, it symbolizes the rebirth of freedom in Eastern Europe. The amazing political changes in what used to be called the Soviet bloc raise questions about changes yet to come. Hasn't an economic barrier also fallen? Don't new opportunities beckon? Shouldn't Western business pioneers be packing their suitcases...
Here caution is indicated. Western Europe lay in ruins in 1945, but attitudes and skills had survived. The invisible destruction in Eastern Europe is worse than the visible devastation wrought by war. Managerial talents have been blighted by a half-century under an economic system that practiced pick- a-number pricing, taught enterprises to hoard inventory and rewarded them for producing a million left shoes. As Mikhail Gorbachev is discovering, it is much easier to learn to use political freedoms than to revive a moribund command economy. Casting secret ballots, speaking up in public, banding together to advance common interests...
...this means that it is much more of a challenge to Western entrepreneurs to be there on the ground as participants in perestroika than to stand outside and sell things to the East. What advice should be given to the intrepid? Efforts must play to Eastern Europe's limited strengths. There is nothing necessarily wrong with the region's engineering and craft skills; it's the managerial savvy that is lacking. Joint ventures sound attractive, but their history provides many caveats. Licensing agreements may be the best bet, if they don't require the import of components that have...
...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...