Word: almost
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...another sign of the students' organizational abilities: while central Beijing ground to a standstill because of the crowds that thronged to the square, the demonstrators, using packing string and their own bodies, cordoned off lanes so the ambulances could always get through. Many hunger strikers made the trip out; almost as many came back to resume their fast once they felt well enough...
...achievement almost proved short-lived. As the number of demonstrators in the square dwindled to nearly none, the students decided to employ one of civil disobedience's most sacred weapons, the hunger strike. With a large contingent of foreign press on hand for the Gorbachev visit, the decision seemed a brilliant public relations ploy. But the choice of tactics also harked back to the sensibility of a much earlier...
...economic reform in 1979, the country has become for many of its inhabitants a more hospitable and prosperous place. Possibly the most remarkable indicator of this is the 132.8% rise in per capita income between 1978 and 1987. Meanwhile the economy boomed at an average annual rate of almost...
...most hurts the average Chinese is an inflation rate of around 30%. Expectations developed over years of growing personal income have suddenly been sharply set back. Prosperity, instead of being around the corner, looks out of reach. Such economic dips happen frequently in history and rarely cause revolutions. But almost all revolutions follow economic downturns. France in 1778 entered a lengthy depression; the tremendous damage done to the Russian economy by World War I helped precipitate that country's revolution...
...playwright. Only that morning Havel, 52, had been released from prison after serving half of an eight-month term for inciting antigovernment demonstrations. Most of the ) visitors had left, when the doorbell rang. The erect, sad-eyed man in the hallway seemed like a ghostly apparition, his palms outstretched almost sheepishly and on his face a mysterious but familiar half-smile. The apartment fell silent. Then someone murmured, "Dubcek." Said Alexander Dubcek, hero of 1968's Prague Spring: "I had to come...