Word: karandash
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...this pie was still in the sky, so were two Sputniks. For days past, Karandash, a famed Russian clown, had been convulsing Moscow audiences by exploding a small balloon, then explaining, "That is the American Sputnik." Never one to pass up a surefire gag, Nikita, too, harped on U.S. discomfiture: "The U.S. announced that it was preparing to launch an earth satellite to be called the Vanguard. Not anything else. Just Vanguard . . . But it was the Soviet satellites that proved to be in the vanguard." Then, all joviality abandoned, Nikita Khrushchev made clear his intention of using Russia...
Within this bitter outline of history, Novelist Blunden has created a large number of vivid people. The most important-and a genuine original-is Dr. Karandash, an old Ukrainian radical who had escaped from Russia years before. Picked up by the Nazis in Prague, he decides to return to Kharkov and collaborate. His hope is an independent Ukraine. Too late, Karandash realizes that he has fooled himself. When he tries to reach the Communist underground, it betrays him to his Nazi bosses...
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