Word: enigma
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...world, and themselves, before. They could do so again. It was in the context of an admission of his inability to "forecast to you the actions" of the U.S.S.R. that Winston Churchill made his famous statement in 1939: "Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." Less well remembered but equally trenchant was what he said next: "But perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest." Four decades later, the U.S.S.R. is still enigmatic, even?perhaps especially?to itself; and it is still trying to unlock the enigma of its own future by figuring...
...other energy experts in both the East and the West are more optimistic about Soviet potential. Leading Kremlin officials insist that their country will remain a net exporter of oil and natural gas for the next 50 years. Economist Marshall Goldman of Wellesley College maintains in his book The Enigma of Soviet Petroleum: Half Empty or Half Full? that the Soviets will actually increase production of energy by 2% to 3% a year through 1985 and possibly more in the years afterward. Most experts believe that the Soviet Union will eventually solve the difficult problems of extracting its reserves...
...dubious honor in recent times. Widely regarded as unusually intelligent and a smooth operator on Capitol Hill, Mondale's main fault appears to be that his loyalty to Carter occasionally outdistances his better judgment. And in many respects, the cool, detached liberal from Minnesota is still somewhat of an enigma in the Carter administration...
...succeeds, not in bringing Sarah Cameron to life but in capturing an altogether different subject: the enigma of experiences filtered through memory. As if dropping a clue, Hellman mentions Proust in passing. Her method, as it turns out, is the opposite of his. She extracts drama from the act of forgetting: "As time and much of life has passed, my memory-which for the purpose of this tale has kept me awake sorting out what I am certain of, what maybe I added to what, because I didn't see or know the people-won't supply what...
Khomeini and the world outside Iran have spent most of 1979 glaring past each other in mutual incomprehension. The barriers to understanding go well beyond the Ayatullah's lack of interest in explaining himself to foreigners. He spent most of his life in obscurity; he was an enigma even to many of the theological students who presumably knew him best. Some of the most basic facts about his life are matters of conjecture, largely because Khomeini regards such personal details as unimportant. It is not known whether his birth date is actually May 17, 1900, as Tehran newspapers assert...