Word: brezhnevs
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Optimists argue that Russia is used to a sick President. It endured the lingering of Leonid Brezhnev and Yuri Andropov. Mitterrand's France is cited as a hopeful parallel. But this argument is flawed, says Sergei Blagovolin, director general of ORT, the largest TV company in Russia, and a member of the President's advisory council: "France was not on the very edge of a crisis...
...public appearances, and even dance to rock music to win the vote," says Zarakhovich. "However, each such recuperation seems to take a heavy toll. These bouts of hyper-activity that followed periods of inaction and illness have led to passivity and long hospital stays, reminding the Russians of the Brezhnev-Chernenko era." How long Yeltsin's latest recovery will last is anybody's guess: "Over last 80 years, the Soviet school of medicine has attained only one major achievement to boast: it has honed to perfection the craft of boosting up Politburo members and keeping them going, even if they...
...least, that Yeltsin is firmly in charge and overseeing the latest game of Kremlin musical chairs with some skill. In Moscow, however, his frequent disappearances reinforce the perception that the country has already entered the post-Yeltsin era, with the enfeebled President--like the Soviet-era leaders Leonid Brezhnev and Konstantin Chernenko--wielding power in name only. This in turn deepens the fear, often voiced in Western capitals and in Russia, that chaos in the Russian Federation is always lurking just below the surface of daily life. Even the top echelons of Russia's government are concerned. According...
...power is clout, like the thud of an iron heel. Influence is sway, like being rocked in a hammock. But like the grass in Carl Sandburg's poem, influence has a way of spreading until it overwhelms every bump in its path. Leonid Brezhnev had power. Andrei Sakharov had influence. Power: the FCC. Influence: Howard Stern. What this means is that influence generally gets the last laugh. Alexander Hamilton never attained the presidency. His philosophical antagonist Thomas Jefferson did. But the world has gone Hamilton's way. By most measures, the country we live in today more closely resembles...
TIME, like most Western media, still buys the myth that Yeltsin is a reformer and a democrat. But face it, he was never the initiator of democratic reforms in Russia. On the contrary, he relies heavily on the old apparatus. Yeltsin made a party career under Leonid Brezhnev, attempted a power grab in a military coup and finally was able to establish himself as a semi-dictator. Since then he has started a war with Chechnya and dismissed all its critics. Yeltsin is responsible for the continued killing of thousands of civilians, including children. Is this the democrat the West...