Word: czars
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...19th century the great powers opposed the upsurge of democracy. Czar Nicholas I of Russia, for example, sent an army to Hungary to crush the revolt there. By contrast, this year's revolutionaries have had the tacit blessing, and sometimes the explicit encouragement, of the Czar's successor as the most powerful man in Russia, Mikhail Gorbachev. By what he has done -- and, perhaps more important, by what he has refrained from doing -- the Soviet leader has made possible the astonishing events of this year...
Such radicalism would not be possible without Gorbachev's glasnost. But the new openness in the Soviet media has also exposed irrational superstitions reminiscent of the last days of Czar Nicholas II. The TASS news agency reports with a straight face that aliens stepped out of UFOs in Voronezh. On TV, psychic healers appear frequently with supposed cures for everything from obesity to detached retinas. As in all periods of great stress, the Christian churches in Russia have seldom been fuller...
There has been one scandal that adds up to major marks. The Politburo's once powerful economic czar, Guntar Mittag, and Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski, a shadowy financial dealer and former state secretary for foreign trade, are suspected of helping divert to Swiss bank accounts tens of millions of dollars' worth of hard currency. The proceeds came from the illegal sale of arms, artworks and other goods. The affair has become known as the Ko-Ko scandal, after the office of Kommerzielle Koordination, through which the funds were funneled. Last week Schalck-Golodkowski surfaced in West Berlin, offering to return some...
...events that have shaken the Soviet bloc in 1989, none is more fraught with history -- or more implausible -- than the polite encounter that will take place this week in Vatican City. There, in the spacious ceremonial library of the 16th century Apostolic Palace, the czar of world atheism, Mikhail Gorbachev, will visit the Vicar of Christ, Pope John Paul II. Before delivering formal speeches in the presence of their entourages, the two East Europeans will sit down alone to chat in Russian without interpreters...
...worse, on their voyage into the future Marty and Doc unwittingly provide him with the means to construct a dark alternate history beginning in 1955. Over its course, Biff has managed to turn pleasant little Hill Valley, Calif., into a hellish variant of Las Vegas, with himself as its czar. He has even contrived to make Marty's mother a widow and marry her, turning her into an alcoholic and Marty into an abused stepson...