Looking Back to the Future
The fatal resentments which Stalin had kindled in the countries of Eastern Europe have flared into a succession of crises of which Poland is the most significant, it only the most recent.
As the appeal of ideology faded. Communist leaders wooed their publics with western-style promises of improved living standards, but for the 80s, they can only promise tightened belts.
In the last programme of the series,
Michael Charlton argues that economic malaise and political stagnation are now generating forces in Eastern Europe which in the past have led to two world wars. Do the states of Eastern Europe have the capacity to make the Soviet imperium unmanageable unless the Russians are willing to contemplate changes which they have always refused in the past? Would some new arrangement for Europe offer more stability than the present division?
Producer DAVID MORTON