Word: factly
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Speaking with the same bluntness heard at past party plenums, Gorbachev did not gloss over the country's continuing shortages in food and consumer goods, but he also contended that many Soviets had forgotten how to work and "had * got used to the fact that they are often paid just for coming to work." His harshest words were targeted at bumbling bureaucrats. Gorbachev told how one ministry had imported almost 30 million medical syringes without ensuring that there were needles to go with them...
...party and its Politburo." He compared some party leaders with commanders who are straggling in the trenches when their divisions are already on the attack. Said he: "Some have already gone so far as to say in effect that democracy and glasnost are very nearly a disaster. The fact that people . . . no longer want to remain silent and insist on making demands is viewed as taking perestroika too far. I for one, comrades, see this as a success of perestroika...
...party boss from the Komi region, in the northeastern part of the Russian Republic. He charged that today's problems could not simply be attributed to past leaders. "We are duty bound to admit that many mistakes and miscalculations have been made in the years of perestroika too." In fact, he wondered if the real truth were being kept from Gorbachev by aides who were "clearly guarding the General Secretary from the severity of the situation...
...there was evidence last week that some local functionaries had not got the message from the first round of votes. In one district of the Russian city of Pskov, the local electoral commission chose the regional party boss again as its uncontested candidate, despite the fact that he lost his first bid at the ballot box. The liberals could at least claim a triumph in the second round of elections at the Soviet Union's Academy of Sciences. After weeks of debate, academy members finally voted Nobel Peace laureate Andrei Sakharov one of their 20 seats in the congress. Independent...
...challenge the Soviet leader in the future, the conservatives are doing so right now, and Gorbachev showed last week that he could hold his own in the debate with them. In some ways, Gorbachev is the Teflon General Secretary, blaming others for the plodding progress of perestroika despite the fact that he has been in charge for more than four years. "Gorbachev's greatest strength may very well be his pragmatism," mused a Moscow intellectual. "He is not dogmatic about carrying out any set program. Instead, he maneuvers in and out of every situation like a clever fox." Nonetheless, with...