Word: felted
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Pasternaks peddle their autographed poetry for a ruble or more a page. Sunday painters in Izmailovo Park display their labored tributes to the Russian futurists, suprematists and constructivists of the early 20th century. More than 200 experimental studio theaters have sprouted in Moscow alone. The cultural explosion has been felt as far away as the Pacific port of Nakhodka, where local artists set up a puppet theater workshop, and in Yaroslavl in the Soviet heartland, scene of a rollicking street festival celebrating the arts...
...prophetic mission in society has haunted Russian culture since the 19th century. That heavy burden crushed novelist Nikolai Gogol, who was never able to equal his masterpiece Dead Souls. It ultimately led other writers, like Leo Tolstoy, away from art and into dogmatic polemics. The weight can be felt today on the Soviet artistic community. But the essential paradox of glasnost is that when cultural leaders raise their voices, they can no longer be heard above the excited babble of an entire nation learning to speak for the first time...
Public Prosecutor Vyaceslav Kuchmin told us that about 100 local instances of Stalinist illegalities had already been reviewed. Not that Kuchmin was in complete agreement with those critics in Moscow who he felt "showed only the negative sides of our history" and drew too many "unfair comparisons" with the U.S. "We are the same people as we were then," he explained. "We can't just exchange this nation for another...
Volodya has known his share of despair. Having drunk heavily since his teens, he says, "I thought I would never be able to stop. I went to clinics where I would dry out, but I could never stay sober. I felt I did not have what it takes to help myself. And then came the group. It was like a miracle...
...Until I joined this group, I felt isolated," says Sasha afterward. "Now I am helped by my friends -- and by my strength and my example, I can be of help to them." By helping others help themselves, Moscow Beginners is rebuilding the sense of self-worth that society had stripped from them. In a limited way, the A.A. style could turn out to be just what the doctor ordered for a society that is trying to humanize itself. Says Volodya: "What I like about A.A. is that it ends our dependence on a cure from above. We are rediscovering...