ABSTRACT
Eastern Europe's evolving pluralization accentuated the distinctions not only between it and the Soviet Union but also between its northern and its southern parts. The regime's willingness to entertain a greater range of unbinding opinions of its choice defined the extent of pluralization it was ready to tolerate. Mikhail Gorbachev's quest for a government based on the rule of law echoed the nineteenth-century German concept of a Rechtsstaat, which had been filtered into the Kremlin through Marxism. However, the indispensability of a supreme ruler, rather than reliance on the State as an institution, classified Gorbachev's approach as more specifically Russian. The official Polish media exuded particular praise for Gorbachev's reformism, while cooperation extended into previously sensitive areas. The Czechoslovak opposition, with its memories of the country's reform movement of 1968, wondered what the similarities between that false start and Gorbachev's program presaged for the future.
