Word: westing
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Vlad Georgescu, a Romanian historian, had more opportunities than most of his countrymen. As a professor in Romania, he was able to travel to the West and meet regularly with intellectuals and scholars at American universities such as Columbia and Berkeley. This contact with Western thinkers gave him unique support when he was expelled from his country this spring. The Romanian government did not like his attempt to create a movement for democracy and a Free Romanian University, which were considered signs of discontent and upheaval among intellectuals. Georgescu was arrested and exiled. While at Harvard this summer, Georgescu commented...
...Foul weather. Last winter was the coldest that the Russians have suffered for 75 years; it damaged power lines, rails and roads and paralyzed production across much of Eastern Europe. East Germany, the world's largest brown coal producer, was forced to import coal from the West. Later, flooding in the north and droughts in the south hurt several countries' harvests and forced expensive purchases of Western grain...
...Lagging technology. This results in generally low-quality goods that are hard to sell in the West. The inability to export much makes it difficult to buy the advanced machines that could produce goods more cheaply. The debt to the West of the Comecon nations is estimated to be $54 billion. In Poland, 50% of all hard currency earned this year from exports will go to pay interest, and that kicks up price levels...
...OPEC for oil, there will be more inflation and shortages. That is causing considerable worry among the commissars. The trade-off for the deprivation of individual rights was always supposed to be steadily improving economic conditions. That is now proving ephemeral. So disillusionment, discontent and defections to the West are reaching epidemic proportions. If prices continue to soar, the political explosion could be immense...
DIED. Major General Ernest N. Harmon, 85, one of World War IIs most decorated commanders; of pneumonia; in White River Junction, Vt. A West Point graduate, Harmon, better known to his troops as "Old Gravel Voice," commanded the "Hell on Wheels" 2nd Armored Division during the Allied invasion of French North Africa in 1942; the division later halted the Germans' westward plunge in the Battle of the Bulge...