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Adjusting to Perestroika
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# : |
13687 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1988 |
3,086 Words |
| Author
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Vladimir Sobell
Vladimir Sobell is a research analyst at Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty in Munich, West Germany. |
Eastern Europe has often been perceived as little more than a zone of Soviet satellite states. Such a view was fully justifiable in the 1950s, when all countries in the Soviet sphere of influence were obliged to follow the Kremlin's precepts slavishly. Subsequently, however, this vision became obsolete, as some members of the alliance, such as Romania, displayed a surprising measure of independence in foreign policy, while others, such as Hungary, managed to diverge substantially from the Soviet economic model. In the age of Mikhail Gorbachev's "new thinking," deviation from the Soviet line continues to remain in fashion, and more rather than less independence and variety can be expected in the years to come. Indeed, variety can be seen in the fact that the Kremlin's new reformist line has encountered stiff resistance from the region's conservatives without the "liberal" Kremlin seeming to be too worried about it.
Yet it would be rash to abandon completely the earlier view, because Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe undoubtedly is the most decisive factor in the region's politics. Instead of a rigid satellite system, however, it is more appropriate to see the Soviet-East European relationship in terms of a looser and inherently more diverse "solar system." The Soviet "sun" does indeed exert a strong gravitational pull over the countries of Eastern Europe (and by the same token effectively neutralizes the pull of the West), but the individual East European planets have been able to work out their own specific orbits.
The mechanism by which Soviet control is exercised boils down to a set of rules that are well understood by both the Eastern European regimes and the populations. Each European country must be ruled by its
... (1992 of 19393 Characters)
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