Word: irkutsk
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...august body of 77 academicians and 99 alternate members. Among them are the state propagandists, whose mission it is to turn out the unending stream of statues of Lenin (with benign and resolute features that grow more Asiatic the further east they go) for public places from Minsk to Irkutsk. Many an unofficial artist finds himself in the predicament of Nikolai Filatov, whose large canvases -- a fervent compost of '50s-style abstract expressionism and broken-up cubofuturist planes -- are beginning to sell in the West, so he has hard currency but nowhere to paint. To get studio space in Moscow...
...accounts, the Ovechkins of Siberia were a remarkable family. After giving birth to the tenth of her eleven children, Ninel Ovechkin was awarded the Soviet title of "Hero Mother." After her husband died in 1984, she reared her seven sons and four daughters by herself in the city of Irkutsk, about 2,600 miles east of Moscow. The boys started a popular local jazz band called the Seven Simeons and recently performed in Japan...
That made it all the more puzzling last week when the family attempted to hijack a Soviet airliner, an incident that climaxed in a moment of supreme horror. According to Soviet press reports, Ninel and ten of her children boarded an Aeroflot Tu-154 jetliner at Irkutsk, bound for Leningrad 2,900 miles away. Their luggage included a double-bass case, which was too big to pass through the airport X-ray machines but which family members insisted was too valuable to put in the cargo hold. About halfway through the long journey, the trouble began. Two of the Ovechkin...
Reflecting Mikhail Gorbachev's call to report the bad news as well as the good, the Soviet media gave the event big play. News of the incident was first carried by TASS, within 24 hours. Follow-up reports included eyewitness accounts from passengers and reaction from shocked residents of Irkutsk. Soviet journalists found themselves bedeviled by the senseless tragedy. Why did they do it? Pravda asked. "They had everything they needed...
...airport at Irkutsk, 2600 miles southeast of Moscow, is a major hub for flights throughout Siberia, and is often jammed with people who sometimes wait for days to make connecting flights...