Word: czaristic
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...Georgian army officer and grandson of a czarist general, Shalikashvili was born in Warsaw and at the end of World War II fled Poland with his family in a cattle car, just ahead of the Soviet army. After migrating to the U.S. and teaching himself English by watching John Wayne movies, he joined the Army and steadily rose through the ranks. A virtually unpronounceable surname (shah-lee-kash-VEE-lee) and a reputation for passing on to subordinates the credit that more flamboyant officers reserve for themselves have earned him the diminutive "General Shali." He made his first international impact...
...chamber of the Congress of People's Deputies knows that this is simply not true. The Russian is more than a democrat; in his heart of hearts, he is an anarchist. Russia's rulers have lived in constant dread of the kind of spontaneous, popular uprisings that troubled the czarist era and set off the Bolshevik Revolution. After the communists came to power, others strove to topple them as the sailors of Kronstadt and the Tambov peasants rebelled against the new regime. It has been this way throughout Russian history: early chronicles describe how ancestors of the Russians appealed...
Every time a slapdash imitation of something Western goes wrong, the Slavophiles latch on to it as evidence of the danger posed by alien ideas. In their view, the Bolshevik Revolution exactly fits this category. The current fashion for wearing czarist-era uniforms and holding balls for descendants of the old nobility reflects an intense nostalgia for a Russia long gone, a monarchist age that appears as full of sunlight and promise for the Slavophiles as it was dark and despairing for the communists. The traditionalists take inspiration from prerevolutionary conservatives like Pyotr Stolypin, the assassinated Prime Minister of Czar...
Furthest on the fringe is Pamyat, a rabidly nationalist, anti-Semitic group espousing a return to the czarist monarchy and unabashedly proud of its fascist symbolism. Its members blame most of the country's ills on "people of alien ethnic origin," and refuse to ally themselves with any communists. Declares Pamyat president Dmitri Vasiliev: "No democratic, no communist system or any other ism will be able to stop this irresistible drive toward purification and freedom...
World War I put the Prussian military machine out of business and created new nations from the wreckage of the Habsburg Empire. But by humiliating and pauperizing Germany, the victors contributed to the conditions out of which Nazism arose. World War I also so weakened Czarist Russia that a band of conspirators who called themselves Bolsheviks and who had a blueprint to take over the world were able, for starters, to take over the largest country on earth...