Word: union
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Soviet Union wants to reduce NATO and Warsaw Pact troops in Europe to 1.35 million for each side, with the Soviets and U.S. limited to 350,000 each. The U.S. says it has just 305,000 troops in Europe now. Bush has proposed that U.S. and Soviet forces be capped at 275,000 apiece. According to NATO, that would mean a reduction of 30,000 U.S. troops and 325,000 Soviet soldiers. At Malta, Bush called for resolving the differences by next year...
People of many confessions, including Christians, Moslems, Jews, Buddhists and others, live in the Soviet Union. All of them have a right to satisfy their spiritual needs...
Later I felt very strongly about decisions that had very little to do with reality. I expressed this view on repeated occasions in the mid-'80s, when great changes were taking place in socialist societies, primarily in the Soviet Union. In the leadership there was a majority, influenced by Honecker, Mittag and others, that opposed these international changes. You can imagine that as a man less than 50 at that time, faced with a General Secretary over 70, my views were not always accepted...
...issued absurd calls for complete German reunification to 1937's borders, which now include parts of Poland. Kohl reassured Germans across much of the political spectrum as well as Germany watchers around the world by emphasizing the term confederation. With its explicit echoes of the Zollverein, the customs union of German states that existed during the 19th century before Bismarck's unification of the nation, the word summoned an image of a large but unthreatening German entity...
There was one unambiguously negative response. As he prepared to leave for Malta, Mikhail Gorbachev named no names but warned against "clumsy behavior or provocative statements." Faced with the paradox of how to hold on to the Soviet Union's most strategically and economically valuable ally now that all the satellites have been freed from their confining orbits, Gorbachev warned that "any attempt to extract selfish benefits from these events ((is)) fraught with chaos." Kohl's next and far more difficult task is to convince Gorbachev -- and many who silently think like him -- that chaos is just what his plan...