Word: dampened
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...East Germany's Communists struggled to dampen the volatile situation, their brethren in Hungary were busy taking steps that, even a few months ago, would have seemed impossible. A majority of the 1,274 delegates at a Communist Party congress voted to rechristen themselves the Hungarian Socialist Party. Hungarian Communism, for all practical purposes, was going out of business. Coming less than two months after the installation of Poland's first non- Communist government since the end of World War II, the Hungarian decision reinforced the historic shift taking place in Europe...
Moscow would not even need to resort to tanks and troops to dampen the Baltic enthusiasm for secession. It could exert pressure just by slapping an embargo on fuel and raw-material shipments. Yet there are numerous way stations of sovereignty on the road to independence. Some Baltic economic thinkers believe, for example, that the region could turn into a clearinghouse between East and West, where Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians could serve as go-betweens for Westerners eager to open up the Soviet market. "The Baltic states may not be as exotic as Hong Kong, but they make a good...
...music lovers and electronics manufacturers, digital audio tape represented a terrific technological leap -- a way to make crisp, distortion-free copies of compact discs and digital broadcasts. But recording-industry artists and executives heard an entirely different tune. To them, DAT would dampen compact disc sales, because one CD could be used to make countless perfect copies. The upshot of the argument was that DAT recorders, sold in Japan and Europe for about two years, have been virtually unavailable in the U.S. Now the two sides have at last found a way to end their dispute. Result: before long Americans...
...estimates range from $66 million to $280 million), moving Culture Minister Jack Lang to rage against "grinches and killjoys." But such petty squabbles could not spoil the flamboyant funky fun of the Florida A&M University marching band, gliding in a moonwalk down the Champs Elysees. Nor could they dampen the soaring spirit evoked when American diva Jessye Norman, wrapped in the blue, white and red colors of the French flag, sang La Marseillaise. For a few fleeting days the City of Light shone brighter than usual. For a magical moonlit moment -- but only a moment -- it seemed possible that...
Demokratizatsiya might be easier to dampen. Conservatives simply could ensure that the popularly elected Supreme Soviet becomes mainly a ceremonial body, with real authority remaining with the Politburo. Even so, the elections of March 1989 are a watershed. Never again will the power of the party seem quite so absolute and unassailable. Never again will it be quite so easy to herd Soviet citizens to the polls to cast ballots with only one name...