Word: blatting
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...multinational corporations with an eye to cheap supplies. Others are front men for organized crime or outlaw regimes, part of a swelling tide of agents who haunt export harbors on the Baltic Sea and travel the countryside. For help, many turn to Russians skilled in the use of blat (personal connections) and vzyatki (bribes) to oil the gears of the postempire black market...
...jobs they perform. Prominent members of the Communist Party and leading scientists luxuriate in secluded, heavily guarded mansions, supplied courtesy of the state. Even second-rank officials usually have a country house at their disposal. Tens of millions of their less exalted countrymen employ their wits and their blat (arm twisting and family connections) to gain entry to beachfront hotels, often located on the former estates of the prerevolutionary Russian aristocracy. Another much sought- after holiday choice for active trade-union members or people suffering from a diagnosed illness are woodsy spas known as sanatoriums. In theory, admission...
...softens up the sanity by explaining that failure is success, and otherwise fulfilling George Orwell's expectations. The revolutionary "vanguard" clearing the way for the dictatorship of the proletariat develops into a "New Class" of privileged party officials and bureaucrats. The system runs by what the Soviets call blat- influence, clout, corruption. A new minority rule sets in. If it is not the dark, satanic will of Stalin, it has little to do with workers' wishes either. Although members of the ruling elite may have come originally from proletarian families, that connection becomes more remote as the entrenchment...
...elder son Yuri, for example, was named First Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade last year at the relatively tender age of 47. Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko's son Anatoli, 48, was appointed director of the African Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1976. Influence peddling-called blat in Russian-prevails at all levels of Soviet society, from the Kremlin down to the local butcher, who can set aside a choice cut of beef for a friend or perhaps his plumber-who will then come and fix his leaking pipes...
...works by blat-influence, clout. Military families intermarry-so do scientific families, party families, writers' families. A Soviet old-boy network promotes its children's careers. Teachers can be intimidated to give better grades to sons of the powerful. According to Smith, "Russians themselves comment that the upper-class feeling today increasingly seems like Russia before the Revolution...