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How Eastern Europe Looks at Glasnost
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12634 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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6 / 1987 |
4,431 Words |
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Peter Michielsen
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The Soviet Union is trying to reform. Under the term perestroika (restructuring), attempts are being made by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to get some movement in the rusty machine - politically, economically, and culturally. The process has until now been largely confined to the verbal field. Few practical breakthroughs have been reached, and no guarantees for success exist. Thousands of party and state functionaries have been purged but millions have not.
Glasnost (openness) is one of the most striking features of the new course. An average but attentive Soviet citizen is surprised day after day by impossibilities that have become possible: Newspapers write about problems in general; blundering bureaucrats, apparatchiks and managers; failures to carry out rational policies; even the Stalinist past. Disasters are reported; previously taboo subjects like the number of psychiatric patients, crime, prostitution, minority problems, corruption, and mismanagement are discussed; controversial books appear; films are shown after years on dusty shelves. Openness alone, of course, achieves no practical solutions - though it can introduce and facilitate them. But the process is breathtaking in itself.
The Eastern European states are following this process with special attention. After all, changes in Moscow never leave the small partners untouched. From Warsaw to Sofia, from East Berlin to Bucharest, whenever the wind from Moscow changes, the small socialist countries have to follow suit. This dogma may have lost some of its meaning because economic pressure from Moscow has been growing: The economically stagnating USSR needs the assistance of its allies - their technological help, manpower, consumer goods, and financial investments. And with the balance of power between Gorbachev and the conservatives a precarious one, he needs even political support from the allies.
Has Gorbachev's perestroika affected the small states of Eastern Europe? How have Gorbachev's Eastern European colleagues reacted to his calls for reform? Most of those colleagues came to power in Leonid Brezhnev's or even Nikita Khrushchev's time. In the past most of them have followed a general Soviet model that sharply differed from the one Gorbachev strives for now, and they are faced with a difficult dilemma: Should they follow the young Soviet leader, with all the risks involved, not only in their own countries but also for their own future if Gorbachev stumbles and falls? Or should they wait and see how perestroika develops? And does Gorbachev indeed expect his Eastern European colleagues to follow him?
As a general principle, and limited to their internal policies, the leaders of Eastern Europe are more interested in a weak and stagnating Soviet Union than in one than radiates strength and self-confidence, one that not only demands but also enforces obedience. In recent years, Soviet stagnation has tended to enlarge the maneuvering space of the small allies. They have been skillful in handling this space.
Earlier than the USSR itself, the small states recognized the connection between sticking stubbornly to ideological dogma and a threatening economic isolation in the computer age. Worried about the general chill between East and West, they have drawn their conclusions by adopting a kind of West-politik of their own. Hungary and East Germany have tightened their links to Western Europe. Twice, Moscow pressured East German leader Erich Honecker to
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