Abstract
In the middle of the 1980s, the dramatic changes in the political life of Soviet society initiated by the style and policies of Mikhail Gorbachev began to engender social and political unrest in the countries of East-Central Europe (ECE). A feeling of discomfort and uneasiness started spreading among the party leaders and political elites, many of whom had not expected any fundamental changes in the Kremlin’s behaviour toward their domains. According to the recollections of William H. Luers, the former US Ambassador to Czechoslovakia (1983–86), published in Foreign Affairs:
a well-informed contact in Prague recently told me that Gorbachev had said to his fellow East European general secretary at a spring 1985 meeting in Sofia: ‘Socialism is a leaky ship. I do not want any of you jumping ship and going for the life boats. You must stay on board and help us patch up this mighty vessel’. Even if apocryphal, these words evoke the state of mind that Gorbachev’s criticisms of the socialist system have brought about among the party officials of Eastern Europe.1
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Notes
H. Luers, ‘The U.S. and Eastern Europe’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 65, no. 5 (Summer 1987) p. 976.
K. Kaiser, ‘German Unification’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 70, no. 1 (Winter 1991) p. 183.
J. Simon, ‘Does Eastern Europe Belong to NATO?’, Orbis, vol. 37, no. 1 (Winter 1993) p. 29.
S. McElwain, ‘The US Response to Events in Eastern Europe’, Peace Review, vol. 4, no. 4 (Winter 1992) p. 16.
G. Allison and R. Blackwill, ‘America’s Stake in the Soviet Future’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 70, no. 3 (Summer 1991) p. 85.
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© 2000 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Bolshakov, S. (2000). Russia and East-Central Europe: changes and blessings. In: Kostecki, W., Żukrowska, K., Góralczyk, B.J. (eds) Transformations of Post-Communist States. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230511309_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230511309_3
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