The declaration was passed unopposed, but the entire Soviet block abstained, along with Saudi Arabia.

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Italian governments did not want to upset Yugoslavia, whose independence from Moscow offered a buffer against the Soviet block.

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In part, the decline was down to the collapse of trade with the Soviet block: new trade with China filled only part of the hole.

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Most diplomats still regard it as a done deal and think it inconceivable that France would really do something as spiteful and destructive as rejecting countries from the old Soviet block.

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EU's enlargement to include ten new member countries, which took place last May, was sold as a golden opportunity to expand a European zone of peace, prosperity and co-operation into the former Soviet block.

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Another source might be Russia, Ukraine and other former Soviet-block countries, which have plenty of helicopters, but have so far offered few of them.

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With the collapse of Soviet and Eastern block economies in the 1980s and 1990s, it was generally thought that SOEs had seen their day.

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Back then, the NATO alliance held firm in the face of an all-out Soviet campaign to block the basing of such weapons and destabilize the governments involved.

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