Word: communist
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...only a transitional figure, put in place, like the Soviet Union's Konstantin Chernenko, to warm the chair for a more visionary thinker. "The real reformers will take over power in the next six to twelve months," predicts Wolfgang Seiffert, a former adviser in the East German Communist Party who now teaches at West Germany's Kiel University. Others see in Krenz the possibility of a Yuri Andropov -- someone who appeals to conservatives but recognizes the need for change...
Analysts were united at least in this: Krenz is no Mikhail Gorbachev. True, Gorbachev was no Gorbachev when he ascended to power almost five years ago. But while Gorbachev was aligned early on with reformist factions within the Communist Party, Krenz is indelibly marked as Honecker's creation. The son of a tailor, Krenz joined the Young Pioneers in his early youth and became a full-fledged Communist Party member by 18. He spent three years at the party academy in Moscow, then returned home to rise quickly through the party ranks. He has been a member of the party...
...appearing on a new weekly show called Thoughts About the Eternal: Sunday Moral Sermon, which a layman had inaugurated the previous week. Pitirim's commentary, though as innocuous as a sermonette after an American late movie on television, was nonetheless historic: the first time in 72 years of Communist rule that a clergyman's sermon had been broadcast. Coming six weeks before President Mikhail Gorbachev's scheduled meeting with the Pope at the Vatican, the show underscored Soviet leaders' increasing tolerance of religious practice...
...official voice of the Communist Party, Pravda could hardly avoid addressing President Mikhail Gorbachev's ambitious agenda. But the paper did so unevenly, sometimes approving changes and at other times reflecting the views of the Politburo's conservative members. As for investigative journalism that turned up scandals from the past, Afanasyev gradually grew tired of exhumed skeletons. "To dig around in the dirty linen of our history," he told the daily Sovetskaya Rossiya in September, "merely serves to lead people away from the solution of our contemporary problems...
...between Gorbachev and leading media representatives. The Soviet President has held other such sessions, but this time he did all the talking. During a two-hour finger- wagging lecture, Gorbachev delivered a blistering attack on liberal elements of the press, accusing them of undermining the influence of the Communist Party. He was particularly thin-skinned about press coverage of the so-called Interregional Group of Deputies, a liberal caucus in the Supreme Soviet, whose members voice harsh criticism of Gorbachev's leadership that makes its way into print. Said Gorbachev: "We are standing knee deep in an ocean of gasoline...