Word: czechoslovakia
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...great variety of symptoms that confronted the Communists of East Germany and Czechoslovakia last week were not morbid, but they did carry the risk of metastasizing into something dangerous. As exhilarating as the rapid pace of change may be, the tight grip of party rule that seemed unshakable just weeks ago has loosened to the point of presenting both countries with the prospect of events slipping out of control. Though the revolution in East Berlin continues to outrace changes in Prague, the dynamics of tumult are much the same in both countries. Besieged party leaders grant one desperate concession ) after...
Meanwhile, Mikhail Gorbachev is confronting a political crisis as the reforms he inspired in Eastern Europe begin to haunt him at home. With Gorbachev's tacit blessing, East Germany and Czechoslovakia have joined Hungary and Poland in abolishing the Communist Party's constitutional monopoly on power. Nonetheless, the Soviet leader has always insisted that the party must retain its pre-eminence in his country if perestroika is to succeed. Last week the Lithuanian legislature defied Gorbachev's wishes and legalized rival political parties, setting the stage for other Soviet republics to do the same. This week radical delegates are expected...
These developments -- and the gleeful speed with which Poland, Hungary, East Germany and Czechoslovakia have guillotined the Communist monopoly -- must make Mikhail Gorbachev feel like the sorcerer's apprentice. Unable to control the rising flood of reforms he has conjured up, he is finding it harder to keep afloat...
...same time persuading conservative foot draggers to join his cause. But to contain the rising tide of dissent in the Soviet Union, now bubbling up through many unofficial groups and opposing factions within the party itself, before it reaches the flood levels prevailing in East Germany and Czechoslovakia, the Communist Party will have to demonstrate that it deserves the support of the people without relying on the crutch of Article...
That plan seems to pave the way for opposition leader Vaclav Havel, a jailed playwright and symbol of Czechoslovakia's peaceful revolution, and dash the hopes of Alexander Dubcek, the 68-year-old Slovak who led the "Prague Spring" reforms...