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New Dimensions for Perestroika
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17694 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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6 / 1990 |
1,967 Words |
| Author
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Larry Moffitt
Larry Moffitt, executive director of the World Media
Association, frequently travels throughout the Soviet Union,
meeting public officials and private citizens. Moffitt holds a
master's degree in journalism from the University of Texas. |
The problems and crises continue to mount for Moscow - food lines, rationing, Lithuanian independence, May Day protests, ethnic violence. Some observers wonder whether the Soviet Union can avoid political, economic, and social collapse. For every new brick that President Mikhail Gorbachev uses to restructure the Soviet empire, two old bricks seem to crack and crumble.
When Gorbachev implemented free market reforms, impatient workers demanded higher wages and better conditions, weakening an already shaky economy. When the Soviet leader introduced glasnost, openness was used to criticize hem. When political reforms were introduced, a liberated Congress threatened to oust its newly elected president. When Gorbachev promised nonintervention in the internal affairs of his neighbors, his own republics demanded the same right.
It is clear that Gorbachev must move his reforms in a radically new direction or the Soviet Union, with or without reforms, will topple and fall. One more Soviet revolution is needed, nonideological in character, different from any in the past, one that will bring the many peoples of the USSR together in a new union.
Is such a revolution possible? No expert on either side of the Atlantic predicted the amazing events of 1989, and yet they came with stunning swiftness. Equally unpredictable was that communist and anticommunist leaders would come together in the spring of 1990 in the cause of world peace. Yet just such a meeting occurred in Moscow on April 11 when Mikhail Gorbachev, dedicated Leninist, confirmed atheist, and leader of the second most powerful nation on earth met Korean evangelist Sun Myung Moon, anticommunist, true believer, and head of the Unification Movement.
The Gorbachev-Moon meeting was, in fact, more unexpected than Gorbachev's summits with President Ronald Reagan, his visits with Pope John Paul II or Czechoslovak President Vaclav Havel, or even his unofficial meeting with Polish Solidarity leader Lech Walesa. After all, Reagan, the pope, Havel, and Walesa are world figures with power and prestige, useful and important to Gorbachev in his continuing efforts to lead his country out of economic chaos and political authoritarianism.
Why would Gorbachev take precious time to meet with a Korean anticommunist evangelist - one who had been internationally persecuted and imprisoned - when he is battered by one crisis after another in the Soviet
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