Word: andreeva
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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There is a sharp ideological battle taking place in our society today. There are no indifferent people because the direction of perestroika will determine the fates of our children and grandchildren." So argues Nina Andreeva, 51, who only a year ago was an obscure teacher of chemistry at a Leningrad technical institute. Today she is famous -- notorious, some would say -- as a symbol of opposition to Mikhail Gorbachev's reform program. His opponents are unorganized, and their criticism takes different forms, but they nonetheless represent a potential threat to his leadership...
...Andreeva's challenge first came in a letter to the conservative daily Sovetskaya Rossiya, attacking "left-wing intellectual socialism," a reference to the flirtation with democracy and glasnost practiced by such journals as Ogonyok and Moscow News. The current debate, she wrote, focused on "whether or not to recognize the leading role of the party and the working class in socialist construction and in perestroika." The intelligentsia, she claimed, "almost as a force is hostile to socialism...
Harsh words, and not just the views of a lone woman. Sovetskaya Rossiya's editors gave her letter (some Soviets believe it was actually written by Andreeva's husband, a fellow teacher) the prominence of an editorial. After it appeared, orders were issued, supposedly by Yegor Ligachev, then the party's leading ideologue, that the letter should be studied by military units and other party cadres. Significantly, publication took place the day Gorbachev departed on a visit to Yugoslavia. After his return, Pravda counterattacked, labeling the letter "an attempt to reverse party policy...
...Andreeva remains unchastened. In response to questions from TIME, she repeated the most frequently heard popular criticism of perestroika -- namely, that it is responsible for "a deterioration in food and other supplies, inflation ((and)) disruption of the financial system." She openly questioned whether Gorbachev's metaphorical proposal to "shake down the old trees" is compatible with true socialism...
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