Problems of Adjustment: The Gorbachev Effect in Eastern Europe

Tlie myth of a monolithic Soviet empire in Eastern Europe exploded long before Gorbachev launched his program of reforms. Even in the years immediately after World War II Stalin's concept of a uniformly obedient ring of satellite states on the western periphery of the USSR did not last long. Although the establishment of communist control in Czechoslovakia in February 1948 seemed to complete the imposition of Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe, the defection of Yugoslavia shattered the monolith within weeks. Tito's success in maintaining his country's independence exercised a profound influence on the communist leaders of the other East European countries. This effect was reinforced by Khrushchev's clumsy attempts to heal the breach between the two countries, affirmed in the 1955 Belgrade Declaration, which, in effect, proclaimed the right of each communist regime to seek socialist salvation in its own way. The East European purges, which had disfigured the closing years of Stalin's rule, had been in vain. After 1956 the USSR was reduced to propping up the ailing economies of its East European allies and protecting its own security interests. Perceptions of threats to Soviet security and stability, rather than any desire to impose the slavish ideological conformity that Stalin had sought, prompted the suppression of the Hungarian revolution in 1956, the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, and, more recently, the support of Jaruzelski's attempt to reimpose effective control in Poland. Within the parameters of the Soviet Union's security interests, the East European