Word: balkanize
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Bulgaria's Balkan is hardly the traveler's dream airline. Pilots do not land; they slap the planes onto the ground. Darkly exotic stewardesses dispense local drinks in tranquilizing amounts. Balkan rates last in ground efficiency, ends its flights at a scruffy terminal in Sofia. The restaurant is poor, but has a captive clientele since taxi service is worse...
Alone among Europe's Communist countries, tiny Albania has stood steadfastly behind China in its dispute with the Soviet Union. Now it appears that there are no lengths to which the little Balkan dictatorship will not go to emulate its big brother to the east. Because of industrial and agricultural shortfalls. Communist Party Boss Enver Hoxha has decreed "a new and big fire for a chain of revolutionary undertakings in all corners of the fatherland" -in short, a "Great Leap Forward...
...Britain's Prime Minister Harold Wilson arrived at the south portico of the White House last week, he may have had a fleeting fancy that he had come to a banana republic or a Balkan kingdom. On hand to greet him were a squad of White House guards caparisoned in Graustarkian dress uniforms festooned with gold braid and nipped at the waist with black leather gunbelts. The black vinyl hats trimmed in gold suggested, by turns, a Ruritanian palace guard, a Belgian customs inspector, and Prince Danilo in The Merry Widow...
Andreas recalls that "Spiro's grandfather was rich by Gargaliani standards." He was a notary public, which carried legal duties and status in 19th century Greece. "But during the Balkan Wars of 1912-13," recalls Andreas, "there was a financial crisis." Without a trace of self-pity, Andreas explains that "though the family was financially broken, our pride and honor kept us from making crooked deals. Therefore we are poor...
Died. Kimon Georgiev, 87, Bulgarian politician whose machinations twice made him Premier of his country; in Sofia. More back-room manipulator than statesman, Georgiev was a master of Balkan intrigue; in 1934, with one unsuccessful coup already to his credit, he engineered the overthrow of the government and installed himself as Premier, only to be toppled within a year by loyalist army officers. After collaborating with the Communists during World War II, he was rewarded by again being put in as Premier when the Russians occupied Bulgaria. He was replaced with a hand-picked party official the following year...