Word: gorbachev
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Boris Yeltsin was a man for the unforgettable surprise. His fame rested on the panache and fortitude he showed in August 1991 when plotters attempted a coup d'état against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. They reckoned without Yeltsin, then head of the Russian Soviet Republic. Clambering on top of a tank outside the Russian White House, he defied those who wanted to return Russia to its communist traditions. Their coup might have succeeded if they had put him under preventive arrest. Instead, Yeltsin emerged as the master of the political situation. Gorbachev came back from detention in Crimea...
...poverty-stricken childhood. One finding: a grandfather of Yeltsin's was persecuted as a rich peasant when Stalin imposed agricultural collectivization. Colton also spoke to acquaintances from Yeltsin's period as Communist Party boss in Sverdlovsk. He justifiably concludes that Yeltsin was already a rambunctious politician before Gorbachev promoted him to head the Moscow City Party in 1985. Yeltsin was like a bull in a china shop in the Soviet capital. As Colton points out, Gorbachev had ignored warnings that his protégé would smash all the crockery as both of them pursued reform. Plenty of Yeltsin...
...assist those who have been harmed. It can extend to an examination of whole systems of government. The Mexico City earthquake of 1985 was the catalyst that convinced a generation that a nation's political system needed radical reform. A year later, after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Mikhail Gorbachev saw that the Soviet Union could not continue in its old ways, and redoubled his nascent commitment to glasnost and perestroika. The Asian tsunami of 2004 prompted those who lived in the devastated Indonesian province of Aceh to find a political solution to the divisions that had long blighted them...
...State, Mikhail Kalinin. Nikita Khrushchev combined the offices of the Gensek and Prime Minister, while Leonid Brezhnev combined his leadership of the party with the role of head of state, because he desired the 24-gun salute and red carpet treatment on his foreign visits. In March 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev became the first and last President of the Soviet Union - but his power continued to derive from his position as Secretary General of the Communist party. It was the first President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, who finally changed the power structure, putting the power in the hands of the presidency...
...declaration emphasized, for example, that the Cold War was over - although there was not much news in that observation, first made at an equivalent summit 18 years ago by President Bush's father and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The document affirms their commitment to improve relations on all fronts, but the trend in U.S.-Russian relations may be moving the two countries further apart than closer together...