Word: gorbachevized
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...Gorbachev, of course, has been reported to be in political trouble almost from the day he took office, nearly five years ago. As he joked last summer, he had already died seven times and his family had been killed three times. Since the beginning of this year, however, there have been signs that the Soviet leader was stumbling in his masterly balancing act. Despite his personal mediation, Lithuanian Communists vowed to continue on their defiant course of independence from Moscow. In the Caucasus ethnic tensions exploded in a virtual civil war, forcing Moscow to send tanks into Azerbaijan in defense...
...radical left been satisfied with Gorbachev's preference for staying close to the center. Party committees toppled as rank-and-file Communists vented their anger at local apparatchiks who were flaunting their privileges at a time when everyone else had to wait in line. Just before the plenum, Gorbachev got an earful from a delegation of miners, many of them activists in last summer's wildcat coal strikes. One worker advised him, "You need to determine more precisely just whose side you are on in this battle." Gorbachev seemed surprised at the criticism, asking, "You mean...
...next day Gorbachev was outwardly composed as he delivered his opening address, but participants detected a quaver of tension in his voice. It was not his purpose, he said, "to dramatize the situation and impart a tragic character" to the fateful decisions facing the plenum, but "the party will be able to fulfill its mission as a political vanguard only if it drastically restructures itself, masters the art of political work in present conditions and succeeds in cooperating with all forces committed to perestroika." No burst of thunderous applause greeted the end of his hour-long speech. After enduring...
Despite the harsh words directed at his programs over the next three days, Gorbachev, who has been known to lose his temper in public, betrayed little emotion. He made a point of exchanging pleasantries with Politburo member Yegor Ligachev, the de facto leader of the conservative opposition, when Ligachev returned to his seat after delivering a demagogic rebuttal to Gorbachev's platform. When the vote to approve the document was finally taken -- and passed with only one dissenting vote, from populist Boris Yeltsin -- the Soviet leader broke with tradition and invited the 108 candidate members of the Central Committee...
Never one to be bound by foolish consistency, Gorbachev dismissed the notion of a multiparty system as "rubbish" just a year ago and warned against taking a hasty decision on Article VI at the Congress of People's Deputies in December. Then, on his visit to Lithuania in January, he lobbed a political hand grenade, off-handedly remarking that he saw "no tragedy" in the development of a multiparty system. Last week he said the Communist Party would still struggle to play a leading role but "within the framework of the democratic process by giving up all legal and political...