Word: backwards
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This sense of being both backward and culturally different from the West has haunted Russian intellectuals ever since Peter the Great (1672-1725) first tried to hector his unwilling country into the arms of European culture. During the 19th century, Slavophiles argued that the spiritual and communal culture based on Orthodoxy was superior to the materialism and rationalism of the West. Their opponents, the Westernizers, bemoaned Russia's "Asiatic" backwardness. They wanted their country to absorb as much of Western economics, politics and culture as quickly as possible...
...like it the way Victor spreads his knees apart and then goes up on his front wheels only and goes backward through the cones zigzagging really fast. That's rad," says a friend nearby...
...Havel, the country's first postcommunist President. Part of the problem is that Slovaks believe their economically depressed republic bears the brunt of Klaus' radical proposals for privatization and austerity. But several thousand Czechs signed petitions in Prague calling for an independent Czech republic, complaining that Slovaks were backward-looking and even dangerous. Where does the dispute leave Havel? He warned of a "permanent political and constitutional crisis" and suggested that he will not run for re-election next month if the federation breaks apart...
Kevin says that he is aware that poetry has become something of an academic property. he admits that it has become the most esoteric of all the genres, and the least widely read. He sees this academic hierarchy as somewhat ironic, because 'it's the backward order of what people give money to. You don't become a poet to make big bucks. I can walk always down the street...
...story comes from Pat Conroy's autobiographical novel The Water Is Wide, recalling how, as a '60s burnout, he turned to teaching deprived black children on a backward island off the South Carolina coast. In the time- honored tradition of teacher-student tales, this man whom the kids call Conrack enriches not only their lives but also his own. Spurning conventional curriculum and methods, he gets his young charges to enthuse about his hero, Beethoven, and his other hero, soul singer James Brown. He instructs them to take pride in America's history and also in Africa's. Touchingly...