Word: dictatorship
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...Union, worked out between the Kremlin and nine of the Soviet Union's 15 constituent republics in June, suddenly seemed far too much. Two weeks ago, the treaty looked so radical that it triggered a coup attempt by communist hard-liners, nostalgic for the bad old days of dictatorship, who figured they dared not let the pact go into effect. Now, in the wake of the popular upheaval that defeated the putsch, the treaty has become a dead letter, judged totally inadequate to slake the republics' suddenly sharpened thirst for independence. At barest minimum, what was still officially one country...
...held by Kryuchkov, Pugo and Yazov, plus possibly lesser-known figures. Some of Russian republic president Boris Yeltsin's aides later fingered Baklanov as the chief plotter. The committee announced that it would rule by decree for six months, and began setting up some of the machinery of dictatorship. All newspapers except for nine pro-coup sheets were ordered to stop publishing, political parties were suspended and protest demonstrations banned. Muscovites going to work or to shop Monday morning had to maneuver around troops, tanks and armored personnel carriers that were moving to cordon off or seize key installations...
...after 74 years of communist dictatorship and, centuries before that, of czarist autocracy, the Russians may get a government they have earned -- a democracy. For the first time, they did not subside into an acceptance of overlords. Instead they turned last week's reactionary coup into a transforming rite of passage, an epochal event that forced even Gorbachev to re-examine his most basic beliefs and resign his post as head of the Communist Party...
...though beneficial in the long run, requires sacrifice in the short run. Although the Soviet Union is not yet a democracy, its leaders must nevertheless fear the consequences of popular wrath. One school of thought holds that for this reason the best route to reform is based on the dictatorship model of Chile and Singapore: bring capitalism, and hope democracy will follow. But most skeptics about aid to the Soviet Union want democracy simultaneously or even as a precondition. The pious hope that democracy can ease and legitimate sacrifice for the national good is not exactly vindicated by current American...
...Nixon's triumphant visit to Beijing in 1972 set up another false impression -- that China under Mao and Deng Xiaoping was a nation on the road to capitalism and possibly even democracy. It is, of course, no such thing. China remains a police state controlled by a Communist Party dictatorship and dedicated to socialist central planning with a few market mechanisms...