Suchergebnisse

This article aims to examine some of the most important challenges that the countries of Central & Eastern Europe (CEE) have had to confront in the two decades since the fall of communism in 1989. While most CEE countries have been quite successful in setting up & consolidating representative democratic institutions, they have encountered serious problems in another area, that of creating effective governments. This article, therefore, focuses on this area & assesses the progress that the CEE countries have made, concentrating on Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic & Bulgaria. Adapted from the source document.

The author analyzes the causes of the most extreme nationalist undertaking in Eastern Europe in the 1980s - the Bulgarian government's attempt to change the names of nearly one million Turks in the space of a few weeks in 1984-1985. It is argued here that the assimilation campaign emerged as a result of a combination of threats and opportunities on a number of levels. Domestically, the failure of alternative strategies of dealing with the ethnic minorities created a temptation to resort to a radical solution, whilst the political and economic resources which the communist leadership commanded and which reached their high point in the mid-1980s gave it the means to undertake such a policy. Internationally, the Soviet Union, Bulgaria's main strategic ally, was powerful enough to protect it against possible Turkish and Western reprisals, but not strong enough to impose its own more tolerant nationalites policy on Bulgaria. (ECMI)