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PASTOR GENLRAL'S REPORT, September 5, 1980
East Bloc Break-Up Coming
Page 12
In his co-worker letter of August 27, 1980 Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong
asked: "Will Poland free itself from Soviet domination and join with
Yugoslavia, Romania and possibly Czechoslovakia--and with Germany, Italy,
France, Spain, Portugal and Austria--in a resurrected medieval 'Holy
Roman Empire' to dominate Europe and equal the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. in
world power?"
As if to partly answer Mr. Armstrong's questions, political analyst
William Pfaff, writing from Paris (Los Angeles Times, August 31, 1980)
observed that "the East Europeans will not permantly remain satellite
states of the sovTetunion, though for the foreseeable future they will
certainly have to remain extremely prudent neighbors .... "
Speculating on Eastern Europe's future orientation, Pfaff continued:
"The current subordination of the East European societies to Soviet
economic and social norms, as well as to Soviet political dictation...
has been the source of repeated international crises of the kind now
once again taking place. A solution has to be found.
"Bulgaria is historically and socially very close to Russia, and it has
been a docile satellite. Romania has also been part of the Byzantine
world, but the Romanians claim to be a Latin society and they have made
the most successful resistance to the Soviet Union. But Poland, Hungary
and Czechoslovakia are all historically independent states, and cultures
of considerable power and originality, which belong to the West, not to
the East. They experienced Renaissance and Reformation. They, like
East Germany, are a part of a sophisticated Central European civilization
whose natural attachments are to Vienna, Berlin, and Paris, not to Moscow.
"The hostility between these societies and the Soviet Union," added
Pfaff, "poses a basic and lasting problem for the Soviet government.
These states are never going to provide the totally reliable zone of
security the Soviet Union wants....It is time that this is recognized in
the Kremlin."
Pfaff recommends, as it were, a "solution" for Moscow's dilemmas. "There
is an answer," he says. "It is the "Finlandization of Eastern Europe."
In other words, Moscow should release all of its troublesome satellites
allowing them to operate as restricted sovereign states, much as Finland
does, in an arrangement that would somehow still allow Moscow to feel
secure behind a Western buffer zone.
Such an arrangement, however, would alter the whole map of Europe. NATO,
as it presently exists, would be finished, as would probably the U.S.
military presence in Europe. Moscow would never_permit its freed sat
ellites to become part of an adversary military bloc, advancing to the
west bank of the Bug River. Talk of pan-Europeanism and of a non
aggression pact would fill the air.
Watch Austria Too
In short, what we're seeing is the first concrete step in the refashion
ing of Western, Central and much of Eastern Europe into a new--� an
cient--arrangement.