Word: czars
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Director of Dining Services Michael Berry demonstrated that energy, creativity and charisma can do wonders in solving tough institutional problems. The mission of a "diversity czar" would clearly be more weighty than that of the Mealtime Messiah...
...only one who doubts that moving a few desks and creating a new title will amount to absolutely nothing? How is the new "diversity czar" (an interesting title in light of conservative accusations that PC is becoming increasingly autocratic) supposed to solve our problems? Hold more picnics? Stage a rally? Distribute a letter? Start a committee? Not exactly a recipe for success...
...empire was ruled, sometimes disastrously, sometimes rather well, by the Romanov family. From 1917 until 1991 it was ruled, always disastrously, by the Communist Party. Bringing back the Romanovs now would certainly be poetic justice. As the historian Richard Pipes wrote, the 1918 massacre by communists of the last Czar, Nicholas II, and his family * was "uniquely odious . . . a prelude to 20th century mass murder." Now that communism has been outlawed, who better to help replace it than the relatives of its first victims...
Both these factors are relevant to the former Soviet Union. The peoples that made it up are heading for sweeping political changes, which will coincide with hard economic times. A constitutional czar would provide an element of continuity, while the politicians do the dirty work and make the hard choices. He would also offer emotional security when things get grim, as they inevitably will...
Establishing a post-Soviet monarchy in such a utilitarian spirit may seem to undermine the emotional aura that would be the new czar's chief benefit. But that aura can coexist with practical considerations. Shakespeare's tragedy of kingship, Richard II, contrasts Richard, an immoral and incapable king, yet one who believes he was divinely appointed, with his deposer and successor, Henry Bolingbroke, who, for all his cunning and competence, is haunted by the knowledge that he is a usurper. Shakespeare presents the shift from Richard to Henry as a changing of the guard, a clean break from one style...