Word: gorbachev
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EARLIER THIS MONTH, IT LOOKED AS THOUGH MIKHAIL Gorbachev had gone from being the new Russia's most famous and privileged private citizen to being its first refusenik, deprived of his right to travel. Then, late last week, he was allowed to fly to Germany for Willy Brandt's funeral. But he remains in trouble back home...
...proximate cause, as a lawyer might say, is his defiance of Russia's highest judicial authority, the Constitutional Court. But the case is much broader: it pits Gorbachev against his protege-turned-riva l-turned-successor, Boris Yeltsin; it reveals the primitive, confused nature of legality in a country that is still emerging from official lawlessness; and it dramatizes the difficulty that all ex-communist states are having in coming to grips with their past...
...Bush Administration has been closely monitoring Gorbachev's ordeal. Ten months ago, the Administration engaged in secret diplomatic exchanges to ensure Gorbachev's safety and dignity once he resigned as President of the U.S.S.R. I know the story because I was, along with the historian Michael Beschloss, very briefly part...
...eviction came one day after Gorbachev lambasted Yeltsin and his government in a newspaper interview, charging that the Russian leader had failed and should hand over power to a governing state council. The reprisal seemed petty, and it diverted public attention away from the real business of the week: Yeltsin's major address to parliament in which he defended his economic-reform program, criticized three Ministers of his own government for poor performance, and offered to cooperate with some of his political opponents...
...search for his Russian ancestors (he finds and dances with his Aunt Sheila.) He wins over the audience, even getting them to stand and sit in an approximation of the human wave that could pass muster on a bad night at Shea Stadium. He mimes a debate between Gorbachev and Yeltsin, offers a tribute to Charlie Chaplin set to Tchaikovsky and, in general, plays on the small-world theme. "I was raised thinking you were the enemy," he tells the Russian audience. "You were raised thinking I was the enemy. We were both wrong. ((Pause.)) It's the French...