ABSTRACT
The global high-technology revolution and the inability of Communist leaders of Central and Eastern Europe to cope with it are driving these countries, and the Soviet Union, into further decline vis-a-vis the Western developed world. The economic and technological revival of Western Europe, especially of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), the only state with a compelling political as well as a traditional economic interest in Central and Eastern Europe, and the European Community's (EC) revived move toward unity make the EC, and most of all the FRG, an increasingly important economic, financial, and technological partner for these Communist countries. In the Soviet Union, as in Central and Eastern Europe, the working class has been the chief mass beneficiary of Communist egalitarianism. The impact in Communist Central and Eastern Europe of Gorbachev's reforms is different, greater, and more destabilizing than in the Great Russian half of the Soviet Union.
