While communism crumbles and democracy takes its place in most of Eastern Europe and even inside parts of the Soviet Union, several communist countries fight the global tide of political and economic freedom, persisting in their Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist ways. Why are China, Cuba, North Korea, Albania, and Vietnam, to some extent, the odd communist nations out? What leads them to reject glasnost and perestroika and to prolong the Cold War?
First, each country has been led for many years by a strong charismatic ruler accustomed to leading and not following: for example, China by Deng Xiaoping, Cuba by Fidel Castro, North Korea by Kim II Sung. None of them feels that he must follow the more democratic path of Mikhail Gorbachev. Second, each is isolated from the rest of the world, either geographically, as in the case of Cuba and Albania, or politically, as in the case of North Korea and Vietnam. Still shaken by Tiananmen Square, the communist rulers of China condemn what they see as dangerous trends in Eastern Europe. Third, each of the nonreformers has a large and effective army and maintains its own security. The Soviet Union has scant military leverage in China, Cuba, Albania, North Korea, or Vietnam - as it did in East Germany and the other nations of Eastern Europe.
In addition, the nonreforming communists are dominated by a small group at the top that pays little or no attention to students or intellectuals, who, by contrast, played a major role in the democratization of Eastern Europe. Finally, each intransigent communist regime forbids effective trade unions, as independent church, free elections, a free press, and freedom of assembly.
As entrenched as they appear to be, it is appropriate to ask: Can these communist nations continue to resist the winds of liberalization that are blowing across the world? In this month's Special Report, David Zweig of Tufts University states that internal conflicts, regionalism, worker unrest, and intellectual unrest threaten to tear China's social fabric apart. But b\he counsels Western nations, including the United States, to exercise caution and not take undue advantage of the instability. "When China emerges from this conservative hiatus," Zweig says, and "seeks full ties with the West, we will be well positioned to engage them again."
The Castro government is doomed, argues author Carlos Alberto Montaner, because it possesses no political legitimacy, has failed to avoid a constant decline in the standard of living, and offers no plan for the future except more of the same. The present U.S. policy of political and economic isolation, he states, should be maintained: "Cuba must be dealt with as South Africa was - until Castro puts an end to the ideological apartheid that he imposed on the island."
Albania's communist leaders have initiated reforms, says Nikolaos A. Stavrou of Howard University, but they are essentially cosmetic and self-serving. The Communist Party remains in control through the use of terror and labor and concentration camps.
Although Kim II Sung maintains a firm grip on the reins of change in North Korea, there are signs of change in North Korea, asserts Selig S. Harrison of the Carnegie Endowment of International Peace. Demands for more and better consumer goods are forcing Pyongyang to open up to Western technology. South Korea's economic
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