Edward Lucas, Eastern Approaches, (Economist.com) Worries about Communist penetration of western society during the Cold War attract more scoffers than believers. Whatever the reasons for the collapse of the Soviet empire, its catastrophic failure makes the idea that it was a real threat to societies based on freedom, democracy and the rule of law appear unworldly, even conspiratorial.
All the more reason, therefore to welcome this new research by historians from Manchester and Glamorgan universities which appears to prove that the stooges running the "GDR" (as the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany was often labelled) financed the most serious industrial unrest in Britain in the 1980s: the strike by the National Union of Mineworkers. Here's the press release.
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