Civil Resistance in the East European and Sozliet Revolutions
different social systems and opposing military-political alliances.1째 The change from such formulae to new ones that seemed to accept greater possibilities of change in eastern Europe, or that seemed to rule out Soviet intervention to preserve socialism, was uneven. For example, Gorbachev's public remarks on his visit to Prague on April 10,1987, were quite largely cast in a traditional mold." In late 1987, at the Moscow celebration of the seventieth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, while "the Brezhnev doctrine was not officially repudiated, Gorbachev intimated that it would not be applied to inhibit gradual changes in Eastern Europe . . . the effect was to encourage those East Europeans who were pressing for changes considerably ahead of the pace of the Soviet restructuring."12 On July 6,1989, addressing the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, Gorbachev continued to convey apparently conflicting messages about the future of eastern Europe: But the difficulty most probably lies in something else: in the extremely widespread conviction and even political goal, when by overcoming the division of Europe one has in mind the overcoming of socialism. But that is a course towards confrontation, if not something worse. There will be no European unity at all with such approaches. The affiliation of the states of Europe to different social systems is a reality, and the recognition of that historical state of affairs, respect for the sovereign right of every people to choose a social system as it sees fit, is a vital prerequisite for the normal European process. The social and political orders of one country or another changed in the past and may change in the future as well. However, that is exclusively the affair of the peoples themselves, a matter for their choice. Any interference in internal affairs,any attempts to limit the sovereignty of states, both of friends and allies, no matter whose it is, is irnpermissible.13 Although these statements seemed at variance with the Brezhnev doctrine, there was still room for doubt as to whether in an actual crisis the Soviet Union would act in accordance with its past practice or its recent words; and whether policy would be made by Gorbachev