Given recent decisions by the European Community in the midst of these signs of the Soviet leadership's backsliding on reform, Gorbachev may believe that he can secure undisruptedeven if he engages in a recentralization of power.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Center For Security Policy

If, however, we continue down the present road of permitting Moscow to use Western financial assistance, including debt relief, as a kind of club to bludgeon independent, democratic-minded republics into submitting to the discredited policies of a new Moscow center we will have misjudged, at a critical juncture in history, the merits of decentralization and the abiding dangers of recentralization.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Center for Security Policy | Western Financial Policy Toward The Former USSR: Debt Rescheduling Support For Decentralization Or Recentralization?