Word: demokratizatsiya
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...view: to turn Russians into modern democrats with a free-market economy that can claim its rightful place in the world community. Some passengers are worried that there will be a colossal breakdown en route. Others are experiencing motion sickness as they try to grapple with new ideas like demokratizatsiya and privatizatsiya or attempt to figure out what makes brokery different from raketeery. (It is instructive that the Russian language has no words of its own for these borrowed concepts.) Still others shout for Yeltsin to crack the whip and get the old nags moving faster. But however bumpy...
...once again, he did all that, and more. In his attempt to break the ministries' stranglehold on the economy, Gorbachev made decentralization one of the cornerstones of perestroika. Under the slogan of demokratizatsiya, he created conditions around the country for popular local leaders, frequently outspoken nationalists, to defeat Moscow's minions. As a result of glasnost, the Kremlin faced up to some of the uglier truths of Soviet history, including the illegality of Stalin's annexation of the three Baltic republics...
...begun to look elsewhere for help. Thanks to a law on joint ! ventures, West Europeans are pouring millions of dollars into the Cuban tourist industry, building luxury oceanside hotels. The Soviets now tell the U.S. that the sooner it lifts its trade embargo against Cuba, the sooner perestroika and demokratizatsiya will arrive on the island...
Only two years ago, President Gorbachev was urging the Soviet people to be bold, to show initiative, to carry out demokratizatsiya at all levels. "Perestroika," he said, "is a revolution." That definition may have seemed all too literal to him last week as the marching Muscovites disobeyed him to prove their support for his main rival, Russian leader Boris Yeltsin. Just as ominously, thousands of striking miners, from the Ukraine to western Siberia, were also resorting to politics, and joined their city cousins in demanding Gorbachev's resignation...
Even in the surprising era of demokratizatsiya, the sight of the head of government lobbying in the corridors of the Grand Kremlin Palace is an extraordinary spectacle. But these are extraordinary times for Gorbachev: at stake are not only his reforms and his own political health but also the survival of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics...