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Introduction: The New Democracies' Rocky Road
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11842 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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1 / 1994 |
609 Words |
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Four years after the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and two years after a putsch by communist hard-liners failed in Moscow, democratic reform seems in trouble behind large parts of the former Iron Curtain.
In Moscow, a political standoff between President Boris Yeltsin and the Russian Parliament was resolved by military force. In Ukraine, President Leonid Kravchuk and the Rada are impeding economic liberalization.
In Poland's parliamentary elections, former communists won nearly two-thirds of the seats in the lower house. In Romania, where citizens cheered the bloody end of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, former communists run the country with a firm hand.
Despite the setbacks and disappointments, however, what is really happening in these once-communist countries is the inevitably uneven shift from totalitarianism to democracy. Americans would do well to remember that it took a bloody Civil War more than eight decades after the Declaration of Independence, to preserve the Republic.
This month's Special Report addresses the following questions: What are the specific political and economic crises in the four key countries--Russia, Ukraine, Poland, and Romania? What are the goals of the former communists who are playing an increasingly important role? What should the West's response be when democratic reform encounters difficulties?
It must be remembered, state Carl Linden and Vladimir Zvyglianich of George Washington University, that Russia and Ukraine have just emerged from their totalitarian past and confront enormous obstacles, including a still-entrenched nomenklatura.
Fundamental difference
Furthermore, there is a fundamental difference in the approach of the two countries toward reform, with Russia rushing ahead and Ukraine holding back. Yeltsin is attempting a real perestroika, not Gorbachevian but revolutionary in its essence. In marked contrast, Kravchuk and the Ukrainian parliament are making decisions often inimical to democratic and market reform.
However, argue Linden and Zvyglianich, if Yeltsin is successful in leading the way toward a Russian republic with a strong presidency and a bicameral legislature, it is probable that a cautious
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