ABSTRACT
The Hungarian leaders and economists have had joint experimental projects in agriculture for some years now with the Soviet Georgia of the new and unexpectedly liberal Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze. As US leaders prepare to meet with the new Soviet leadership, it is not only the Soviet Union’s stagnating internal situation that obsesses that leadership. It is actually on the peripheries of the Soviet empire that one can see the form of the new era—and its compelling new problems. Hungary’s extraordinary economic liberalization—which began with aching slowness after the 1956 revolution—has in effect already been okay'd by the new Soviet leadership. Some analysts have been quick to point out how different the situation is from the 1970s. With a modest economic boom in process, Eastern European countries flirted with the West. Romania remains the bloc country most in crisis, as well as first in repression.
