Word: gorbachevized
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Elsewhere in the Communist world, leaders like Mikhail Gorbachev and Poland's Wojciech Jaruzelski are trying to break old patterns by channeling unrest and rising expectations into a limited evolution toward more democracy. China's old men seem to have missed the message -- and sacrificed much to their desire to retain absolute power. Forced to choose between accommodating change and maintaining the regime, they chose tyranny...
...complaints wore on, Gorbachev had reason to wonder, perhaps for the hundredth time, what he -- and glasnost -- had wrought. While his countrymen sat transfixed before their TV and radio sets, the Deputies who filled the vast hall continued to unleash frustration, criticism and not a little invective at their rulers -- even at Gorbachev himself. Some Muscovites said they found the show so riveting they had to keep their heart pills handy. Others admitted they watched and wept. One Transcaucasian Deputy aptly called the assembly a "volcano of words and wishes...
Amid all the week's eruptions, Gorbachev continued to dominate. In a 95- minute policy speech, he offered help for low-income Soviets, ordered an audit of all the benefits and privileges enjoyed by the ruling elite, and called for cuts in capital construction and the space program. He promised to reduce next year's defense budget 14% and disclosed that Moscow spent considerably more on the military than many of the Deputies suspected: about $130 billion a year, or some 9% of the Soviet Union's gross national product. Western leaders had long sought such an admission, but analysts...
...seat in the new Supreme Soviet, and that, it | seemed, was the end of his thrust for position. But then Deputy Alexei Kazannick, an obscure university professor from Siberia, rose and announced that he would relinquish his place to Yeltsin. As applause rang through the hall, Gorbachev watched impassively from the raised tribunal before he told the hushed assembly, "In principle, I support such a proposal...
Yeltsin got the seat -- and lost no time in pursuing his favorite themes. Sounding very much like the leader of the opposition, he charged that Gorbachev's recent self-criticism "did not absolve him of responsibility for the failure of his reforms." Punching away at the party apparatus and its privileges, he urged that the "word nomenklatura" -- a reference to the 3 million or so holders of top jobs allocated by the party -- "be dropped from our lexicon." Yeltsin also called for election of a new Central Committee and demanded that the President submit to an annual vote of confidence...