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Nonreformers--The Other Eastern Europe
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15988 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1989 |
2,240 Words |
| Author
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Richard F. Staar
Richard F. Staar is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution
on War, Revolution, and Peace as well as author of The New
Military in Russia: Ten Myths That Shape the Image (Annapolis,
Md.: Naval Institute Press). |
Reports on liberalization within certain communist-ruled states of Eastern Europe have pertained only to Hungary, Poland, and Yugoslavia. Changes in this last regime, however, are of a different order, since Yugoslavia should not be considered a client of the Soviet Union. Even though Yugoslavia holds associate membership in the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), the government in Belgrade never joined the Warsaw Pact. Albania maintains no relations whatsoever with the USSR and, hence, will not be treated here either.
This essay deals instead with the "other" four countries in Eastern Europe, all of which are governed by Stalinist-type regimes: Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), and Romania. The communists in these states are trying to ignore or, at most, pay only lip service to what is taking place in the Soviet Union. They proclaim that they already have experienced their own reforms or that they will postpone such experiments until after their next Communist Party congresses. In this way, some of Moscow's most loyal supporters are finding themselves in opposition to current Soviet developments.
Bulgarian Bulwark
Bulgaria's party and government boss, Todor Zhivkov, who will be 78 years old this September, shows no willingness to relinquish the power he has held the past 37 years. Potential successors, representing the new technocratic generation, were eliminated in two successive purges in July and December of 1988. The net result is a smaller, now only 10-member Politburo, six of whom are 68 or older.
Although legislation allowing for multiple candidacies preceded last year's elections to regional and municipal councils, in about 80 percent of the electoral districts, seats either remained uncontested or a second candidate was disqualified. Other kinds of reform have not fared much better. An agricultural resolution by the Politburo last September, for example, proposed that a farm worker, his family, or a collective could lease land from Bulgaria's agro-industrial complexes for up to 50 years. A nationwide discussion would precede final action on this proposal, the implementation of which is being delayed. A trade agreement with the USSR for 1990 envisages a two-way exchange totaling one billion rubles.
Relations with the Soviet Union, however, reportedly are influenced by a mutual dislike between Mikhail Gorbachev and Zhivkov. That may explain why a new ambassador in the person of
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