Russia and East-Central Europe: changes and blessings

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