Systems Change in the Socialist Bloc in 1989
This is an excerpt from the paper...
The late summer and fall of 1989 witnessed and continue to witness dramatic and rapid change in most socialist bloc coun tries. The western press, ever adversarial, cover the events as if they were a supreme sporting event, such as the Davis Cup, wherein one system is about to be vanquished by another. The Associated Press proclaimed "Going, going . . . . . . . Communism almost gone" (Revel, 1989, E1). In all probability, the press is correct one system is about to vanquish another. The problems with their analysis are that they have failed to (1) correctly identify either of the systems involved, (2) accurately identify the likely structure of the changes which will occur, (3) recognize that changes which do occur will not likely be uniform in all socialist countries, and (4) recognize the factors which could lead to a moderation of the change occurring in some socialist countries. This research examines the direction of change occurring in most of the socialist bloc countries, with a view toward assessing these factors which the majority of the western press has overlooked. SYSTEMS CHANGE IN THE SOCIALIST BLOC First and foremost, the political change occurring in the socialist bloc in the summer and fall of 1989 is a rejection of 1 2one party rule. Change of this type occurs periodically in western democracies, when one political party has held power for an extended period of time. Canada is a good example. During the twentieth century, the Liberal Party pa
. . .
d a stateless society. As it happened, however, Stalin changed the character of the socialist experiment by (1) implementing a rigid cen tralized control over economc processes, and (2) institutional izing one party political power. In examining the contemporary economic developments in the Soviet Union, several factors must be considered. First, the 4economic initiatives of Gorbachev are not unprecedented in socialist states generally, nor in the Soviet Union in particu lar. The New Economic Policy (NEP) implemented by Lenin in the USSR in 1921 (Mazour, 1967) has served, in many ways, as a model for Gorbachev (1987). Yosif Stalin terminated the NEP in 1928 (Mazour, 1967). In the mid 1950s, Nikita Khrushchev introduced significant economic reforms in the USSR, which were terminated by Leonid Brezhnev in the mid 1960s (Walker, 1986). Elsewhere in eastern Europe, both Yugoslavia and Hungary implemented economic reforms in the 1960s. Those in Hungary were curtailed to the point of death, prior to being revived in the 1980s. In 1979, the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) imple mented far reaching economic changes. Even in the wake of the violent supression of student protestors in the spring of 1989, the Chinese e
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
Soviet Union, Communist Party, Associated Press, STRUCTURE CHANGE, SOCIALIST BLOC, Yugoslavia Hungary, China PRC, , USSR Gorbachev, Hungary PRC, socialist bloc, soviet union, gorbachev 1987, , economic reforms, occurring socialist, socialist system, change socialist bloc, yugoslavia hungary, parliamentary majorities, socialist countries, change occurring socialist, market economy concept, extent represent rejection, economy concept capitalism,
Approximate Word count = 1618
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
More Essays on Systems Change in the Socialist Bloc in 1989
|
Customer Service
to Over
32,000 Professionally Written Papers!!!
