Eastern Europe: News Shorts: Bulgaria, East Germany, USSR, Communist Parties

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HERE the USSR [and to] the consolidation of the Soviet state, historically constituted as a single multinational, socialist country." The report appeared in Sovietskaya Rossiya, a paper that reflects the views of the anti-perestroika sections of the Soviet bureaucracy. Among the groups represented at the congress were the so-called "internationalist fronts" that have been trying to organize Russian workers in the Baltic countries against the national movements. * COMMUNIST PARTIES Building the parties MEMBERSHIP problems were at the centre of the discussions at this year's meeting of Secretaries of ruling Communist Parties in Havana, according to a report by three Soviet academics in Pravda (September 18, 1989). Some ruling parties are growing very slowly, while the Hungarian party fell from 880,000 members in September 1987 to 730,000 at the time of the meeting. The authors estimate that the Hungarian party is losing about 2,000 workers each month. Ageing is also a problem: only 12% of the members of the Bulgarian CP are under 30, while the figures for Hungary and Poland are 8% and 6% respectively. The authors believe that the problems stem from the fact that people have yet to feel tangible results from economic and political reforms. But the decline of the youth membership of the Polish and Hungarian parties suggests another reason: as soon as it is no longer absolutely necessary to join the party for career reasons, one of the main reasons for enrolling disappears. *

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Perestroika has shaken especially the you up* people up, commented A. Evsyukov, chairperson of the Kemerovo strike committee in the Kuzbass.

Miners' strike opens new act in perestroika