Word: factly
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...very fact that the button is available at all is a sign that those attitudes are beginning to change. The Soviets seem determined to make up for lost time. In the past year as never before, TV shows have been alluding unashamedly to sex and even offering occasional nudity, while films have had explicit sex scenes. Last December at an erotic-art exposition in Moscow, a woman was covered in whipped cream and men in the audience were invited to lick it off; the scene was later shown on late-night TV. The capital even boasts its first touch...
...fact the quality of theater in Moscow is very high. Playwriting, if at times too grandiosely spiritual, at least concerns itself with bigger issues than middle-class marriage, the preoccupation of the commercial stage in the West. Acting is certainly of the caliber of Broadway or London. So is stage design, if a bit too dependent on imaginative metaphor rather than money. True, productions tend to look a lot alike, regardless of content: perhaps as a reaction against the easy intimacy of TV's close-ups, almost every company seems infatuated with mounting shows in gloomy near darkness...
There are signs that Gorbachev's revolution has in fact engendered "new thinking" within the Communist Party. When party members are asked the touchy question of whether the Soviet Union might someday have a multiparty system, an impressive 36% express readiness to entertain the notion. Among the general public, 40% of the men thought the Communist Party would eventually have competition, while women were more conservative, with only 27% taking that view. Another surprise: even after decades of official atheism, half of all party members say religious believers can also be members of the Communist Party...
Unless Gorbachev can deliver on his promises of a better life, his popularity is likely to slip further. What may work to Gorbachev's benefit is the fact that only one-fourth of those polled expect their lives to improve. With expectations that low, Gorbachev may never find himself in the ratings cellar...
...stopped for an hour or so at the dacha (twelve miles outside Moscow) where Daniel spent the last years of his life, the police turned up unexpectedly and announced in embarrassment that as foreigners we were "violating a forbidden zone." The good-natured policemen did little to hide the fact that they were being forced to draw up a report on the orders of the KGB. The quiet snowfall beyond the window, reminding us of an old-style Russian winter, was our reward for this "violation...