Word: betterment
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...answer again involves contradictions. Life is clearly far better these days: the fear that was the most oppressive aspect of daily existence has been replaced by a torrent of free expression, while experiments with market principles show faint signs of sparking economic success. Life is just as clearly no better at all: the shelves in the shops are more barren than when Gorbachev took office, the limited economic reforms serve mainly to reveal how hopelessly ossified the economy is, and the flirtation with freedom has frayed the seams binding the empire's diverse nationalities...
Osadchuk's eager clientele largely represents a new class of Soviet consumer: the nouveau riche, of which she is a proud member. Better yet, call them yuccies -- young upwardly mobile Communists. Osadchuk pays herself a monthly salary of 700 rubles, or $1,120, about three times the average Soviet salary and enough for her family to live very comfortably. Says she: "We buy anything we want." Thanks to the co-op movement, employee profit sharing and other budding forms of entrepreneurship, many Soviets are suddenly earning enough money to do more than just scrape by. They are enjoying a taste...
...Adidas sneakers, has richly furnished the three-room apartment he shares with his wife Tanya and son Sergei. A sleek, ebony-colored bookcase holds a Korean color TV and matching video system. Ivlev says he paid 1,000 rubles ($1,600) for a Panasonic tape deck. "And we have better food because we shop at the open market, where prices are higher," he points out. Is their bank account growing? "It's not our aim to save money," says Tanya. "We want to spend as much...
...does freer mean better? Can liberalism guarantee artistry? Alas, no. Nor are today's Soviet films likely to be superior to those of the first flush of revolution. Now that the specter of Stalinism has receded, another shadow haunts Soviet filmmakers, and it may be harder to escape. This is the legacy of Sergei Eisenstein, V.I. Pudovkin, Alexander Dovzhenko and Dziga Vertov, the giants of Soviet silent cinema. Their works (October, Mother, Earth, Man with a Movie Camera) remain at the core of every film curriculum; movies are still made in the visual language they helped invent...
...first single woman is the Soviet moviemaker of yesterday, whose failed struggle made the new freedom possible. Her neighbor is today's film artist, whose pictures are as artless as a cry for help and as urgent as the dream of a better future. It would be nice if the U.S.S.R. could produce a few masterpieces, as it did 60 years ago. But happy endings are, after all, the stuff of movies, not moviemaking. And what Soviet filmmaker would dare hope for more than a resolute beginning...