Word: hear
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Like the boy in the Russian folktale whose magical hat allows him to see and hear everything unobserved, I sat at the dinner table and listened to Razhev and Karpov. The exchanges about ecology and the financial obligations of local factories to the surrounding community crackled. But it was not the flow of argument that impressed me so much as the fact that an American was allowed to listen. Had Soviet officials always spoken so bluntly among themselves? Or was this a reflection of plyuralizm, a borrowed word slipping awkwardly off Russian tongues...
Some parents blame the teachers. For years, teachers have been one of the most conservative elements of Soviet society, barking orders like drill sergeants and demanding ready obedience. In many schools, parents are called in for collective meetings, where they hear their children denounced before other adults. Any mother or father who tries to defend his child does so at the risk of seeing him later punished by his teacher. Boyko agreed that many teachers are not prepared for reform. "They don't have the strength to change, or they think the old ways are just fine," she said...
...Wednesday Exxon spokesman Donald Cornett admitted that beach cleanup had not started and that one boat had just sailed around gauging the extent of the spill. Later that night he was greeted in nearby Cordova by citizens displaying signs that read, DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU HEAR. ESPECIALLY AT ALYESKA AND EXXON PRESS CONFERENCES...
Careful, there. This is no ordinary statue you're adjusting, but one representing the father of the state, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, the man who renamed himself Lenin and reshaped Russia in the Bolshevik Revolution. One crucial slip by workers at Moscow's All-Union Artistic-Production Association (hear the clang of bureaucracy in that name), and they must pour a whole new mold. In attempting nothing less than a second revolution, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is also adjusting Lenin, paying lip service to his dogma even while reshaping it to fit the needs of the U.S.S.R. The task is a delicate...
...performances of enchanting sweetness from Anton Tabakov as a young co-worker and of feral malignity from Valeri Shalnykh as a mock-friendly gang enforcer. But the most memorable scenes show Sparrow alone with his cacophony of fears, climbing arduously up to a bell tower where he can hear the euphony of wind and birds and a distantly remembered lullaby, until a screeching train cuts off his reverie. Emotive yet astringent, these are moments worthy of Charles Laughton in a play sometimes deserving of comparison with Gorky's The Lower Depths. If Soviet theater remains for the most part...