Word: cognacs
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...President was born in 1916 in the small southwestern town of Jarnac, in the Cognac region. His active political career began with World War II. Shot in the chest and captured near Verdun, he escaped from a German prison camp and joined the Resistance as an organizer of former P.O.W.s. Shortly after the war, Mitterrand was elected to the National Assembly as a candidate for the Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance, a small but pivotal center party that won a surprising number of Cabinet posts under the Fourth Republic. Over a 13-year period, Mitterrand held eight Cabinet...
...them the usual basket of fruit but has also remembered their taste for violets, which are in a Baccarat bowl, and Degas prints. Returning after dinner, they find that the triple- sheeted bed has been turned down, with Godiva mints set on the pillow and a small bottle of cognac on the night table. Before retiring they put their shoes outside the door; the valet will, of course, polish them overnight...
These political leaders, along with other Soviet elitists, enjoy the use of country dachas, yachts and Black Sea vacation resorts. While ordinary Soviet citizens queue up for scarce consumer goods, members of what one Soviet journalist calls the "Communist nobility" shop in special stores for caviar, French cognac, Swiss chocolates and Japanese stereo sets. They patronize tailors, hairdressers and cleaners who serve them exclusively. Lesser privileges are enjoyed by thousands of middle-level managers, local party cadres and other important citizens...
...like an "Olympian god," the book says, treating his former subordinates with condescension, electing to dine in regal solitude. For a time, he kept up a correspondence with some of his former girl friends. That did not, however, stop his wife from trying to smuggle him a ration of cognac in fruit-juice cans. It was he who persuaded the authorities to install wiring for air conditioners and other appliances in the cells, which are likened to comfortable studio apartments...