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Introduction: The Nonreforming Communist Nations
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17684 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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6 / 1990 |
726 Words |
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While communism crumbles and democracy takes its place in most of Eastern Europe and even inside parts of the Soviet Union, several communist countries fight the global tide of political and economic freedom, persisting in their Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist ways. Why are China, Cuba, North Korea, Albania, and Vietnam, to some extent, the odd communist nations out? What leads them to reject glasnost and perestroika and to prolong the Cold War?
First, each country has been led for many years by a strong charismatic ruler accustomed to leading and not following: for example, China by Deng Xiaoping, Cuba by Fidel Castro, North Korea by Kim II Sung. None of them feels that he must follow the more democratic path of Mikhail Gorbachev. Second, each is isolated from the rest of the world, either geographically, as in the case of Cuba and Albania, or politically, as in the case of North Korea and Vietnam. Still shaken by Tiananmen Square, the communist rulers of China condemn what they see as dangerous trends in Eastern Europe. Third, each of the nonreformers has a large and effective army and maintains its own security. The Soviet Union has scant military leverage in China, Cuba, Albania, North Korea, or Vietnam - as it did in East Germany and the other nations of Eastern Europe.
In addition, the nonreforming communists are dominated by a small group at the top that pays little or no attention to students or intellectuals, who, by contrast, played a major role in the democratization of Eastern Europe. Finally, each intransigent communist regime forbids effective trade unions, as independent church, free elections, a free press, and freedom of
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