Word: backgrounding
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...could be sure that the leadership battle was definitely over. Although Andropov decisively occupied center stage at the elaborate ceremonies surrounding the funeral of his predecessor, Leonid Brezhnev, leaving any rivals far in the background, the country's gerontocratic leadership had not substantially changed. Only when Andropov faces this week's meeting of the 308-man Central Committee will his skills as a political infighter and his ambition to put his mark on the Soviet Union be tested...
...latest. His body was unhitched from a hospital machine last week and allowed to join his brain in death four days after a left-right combination by Ray ("Boom Boom") Mancini flattened him 19 sec. into the 14th round outside a casino in Las Vegas. In the background of a wirephoto showing Kim lying still, a striking number of the Caesars Palace spectators are balling their own fists. More than 50 years ago, Writer Irvin S. Cobb described the fight fan: "He is a soft-fleshed, hard-faced person who keeps his own pelt safe from the bruises, but whose...
...standard of living under Brezhnev, Soviet citizens may have to settle for no further improvement in the 1980s. But they are not likely to rebel openly. Lacking any genuine forum in which to express dissatisfaction, Soviet consumers will probably do little more than grumble. Andropov, with his KGB background, may deal more harshly with strikes or other eruptions of anger that might occur. Says Historian Walter Laqueur: "Expect tighter discipline rather than liberalism, but expect some economic reforms...
Consequently, too much is only hinted at, left lurking in the background: Morreau never lets on what, if any, significance she hangs on Marie's adolescence. Do her experiences symbolize Europe's response to the approach of the Second World War? Is Morreau trying to show how even country life can be disrupted by war? Does Marie represent a growing external consciousness of life or is she just a little girl with an over-active libido...
...morning--about 45 precious minutes before I had planned to awake. To make matters worse, my roommate also likes to start the day with a burst of WEEI news radio. I have come to hate those monotonous traffic reports and the incessant simulated clacking of typewriters in the background. Tuesday morning, though the static aired an advertisement so intriguing that I cut through my early morning fog long enough to listen...