Word: czars
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Drug Czar. A most enjoyable and relaxing job, it has the added distinction of being the only government post named for a Russian. Its best feature is that while it requires no effort, it also demands no successes. As drug czar all you need to do is claim, every few months, that you are eradicating the nation's drug problem. Everyone will understand that you're kidding. The person who accomplished the least in this position, and was therefore the most successful, was William Bennett, who was equally successful as Secretary of Education, an office that he recommended be abolished...
...never been on a long trip before," says "trip czar" C. Larry Malm...
...characters. As a boy growing up in Simbirsk, Lenin distinguished himself in Latin and Greek. The signal event of his youth--the event that radicalized him--came in 1887, when his eldest brother Alexander, a student at the University of St. Petersburg, was hanged for conspiring to help assassinate Czar Alexander III. As a lawyer, Lenin became increasingly involved in radical politics, and after completing a three-year term of Siberian exile, he began his rise as the leading communist theorist, tactician and party organizer...
...when the first rumblings of Gorbachev's thunder disturbed the moldy Soviet silence, the holy fools on the street--the people who always gather at flea markets and around churches--predicted that the new Czar would rule seven years. They assured anyone interested in listening that Gorbachev was "foretold in the Bible," that he was an apocalyptic figure: he had a mark on his forehead. Everyone had searched for signs in previous leaders as well, but Lenin's speech defect, Stalin's mustache, Brezhnev's eyebrows and Khrushchev's vast baldness were utterly human manifestations. The unusual birthmark...
...trusted the wrong people, no doubt his hearing and sight were dulled by the enormous pressure and he made many crude, irreversible mistakes. But maybe not. In a country accustomed to the ruler's answering for everything, even burned stew and spilled milk are held against the Czar and are never forgiven. Similarly, shamanism has always been a trait of the Russian national character: we cough and infect everyone around us, but when we all get sick, we throw stones at the shaman because his spells didn't work...