Word: gorbachevized
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There are several casual links. The first is Alexander Yakovlev, known as the architect of glasnost and perestroika, and Gorbachev's chief adviser. He had been in charge of re-imposing the Stalinist ideology on the Czechs after the Soviet invasion, finding it in his words, "one of the most horrible things I've had to do." His own idea of communism changed then, as he could not argue against the far more timely ideas of Dubcek's people...
Today in Moscow, however, the foreign invasion is in full swing. American consumerism is fast consuming Moscow's population. The perestroika-era novelty of Gorbachev sneaking McDonald's and Pepsi through the gates to a hungry population has begot a deluge of American products. Today, the area behind the Kremlin looks quite a bit like Times Square. Sanyo and Coca-Cola signs light up the night sky. Russians chow down at a McDonald's only a few blocks from the Kremlin, while a Pizza Hut a few blocks further down Tverskaya Boulevard faces a statue of Pushkin, Russia's national...
Despite these immense changes, however, many Americans still think of the Gorbachev era when they think of today's Russian market. They still bring their extra blue jeans and Beatles tapes here to sell on the street. Not only are products like these readily available, but many stores in Moscow carry products I have never even seen in America. Virtualny Mir (Virtual World), an electronics store, boasts products like a fifty-inch high-definition television with DVD players and a strobe-lit dishwasher with a transparent front. After six years of Western companies cultivating the idea of conspicuous consumption here...
...nice to be a TV star's car, just as it's nice to be a TV star (Seinfeld owns an additional 60 or so cars, not all of them Porsches, which he warehouses in an airport hangar in Santa Monica). And now that even Mikhail Gorbachev has begun doing commercials for Pizza Hut, it seems pointless to argue with the medium that so dominates our lives and culture. Most of us threw in the towel long ago. But not Jerry Seinfeld. While the rest of America has been off getting college credit for studying Silver Spoons, the star...
...MIKHAIL GORBACHEV 1989 Man of the Decade...