Word: duma
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...western region. "We peaked too soon," Dresner screamed. Only Shumate seemed cool. He had long before concluded that Zyuganov would never get more than 32% of the vote in the first round--the combined total the Communists and their ideological soul mates had reached in the December 1995 Duma election. "This stinks," Dresner repeated every few minutes as he checked the turnout around the nation. "It won't fall below 65%, and our model shows we win with that," answered Shumate, who then left with his wife Joyce to attend a production of La Traviata at the Bolshoi Theatre...
Yeltsin's staff brought a set of potentially disastrous biases to the campaign. They thought the polls they read in the papers were good enough to determine strategy, and because so many of their allies had failed miserably in the Duma elections despite spending huge sums on television commercials, they believed political advertising was useless in Russia...
...like, 'If Yeltsin were a tree, what kind of tree would he be?' We needed to know whether voters would move to Yeltsin if he adopted a particular policy, but for that crucial purpose the research in hand was totally uninformative. As for the TV spots used in the Duma elections, they were creative and pretty, but they were far from hard-hitting. "All of that," says Shumate, "had to be explained to a group of people who, no matter their professed commitment to democracy, were trapped in a classic Soviet mind-set. They thought they could win simply...
Even so, there are plenty of minicrises coming. Privatization is lagging; agriculture is unreformed; the government is not collecting the taxes it is owed; and industrial production is still falling. Lebed and Chernomyrdin are sparring, and the Duma is looking for ways to assert its authority. A strong, engaged President may be able to sort it all out, and Yeltsin's supporters hope he has the heart...
Lebed was important to Yeltsin's re-election, so Chernomyrdin has loyally kept silent during most of these provocations. Now that Yeltsin has renominated him as Prime Minister, and now that Duma speaker Gennadi Seleznyov, a top Communist leader, has indicated he will not oppose him, Chernomyrdin is firing back. Yeltsin, he told reporters, had instructed him to put together a list of Cabinet members for the President's approval. "I have never delegated any of my powers to anyone, and I will not," he said. As to the vice presidency, says Chernomyrdin, that will have to wait at least...