Eastern Europe Change Backed by Gorbachev
President Mikhail S. Gorbachev today expressed support for the rapid changes encompassing Eastern Europe, including demands for reform in Czechoslovakia.
Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union must undergo radical change because they lag behind the West technologically, Gorbachev told reporters after meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.
On Monday, about 200,000 people filled Prague’s streets demanding free elections and other freedoms, and tens of thousands demonstrated again today. Also, an official newspaper published an opposition call for the ouster of top Communist leaders.
“I think the changes under way now are consistent with the overall context of the changing world, a world that is changing in both the East and the West,” Gorbachev told reporters.
“I think the change is very important, and the importance of the change will be that it will create a better society, a more open society, a more democratic society,” he said.
Gorbachev said Communist countries had fared badly compared with the way in which the West coped with the energy crisis in the 1970s.
“In the Soviet Union and in Eastern European countries at that time the situation looked more favorable and we miscalculated. We wasted time,” he said.
“Now we have to make up for lost time and this requires a more rapid pace of change.”
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