Word: kgb
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Gorbachev has become more and more adamant in his insistence that the Soviet Union "cannot be divided." In fact, he has turned to the army, the KGB and the police to be the enforcers of his plan to stabilize the country. First he directed the KGB to form a special unit to supervise food deliveries from abroad; then he issued a decree establishing "worker control" groups to clamp down on black-market pilfering of food supplies. Last week he began his promised shake-up of the government leadership by going after the police. Two days later Gorbachev told the Supreme...
...party and armed services, long on the defensive, have finally found an audience among a public that increasingly associates perestroika with long lines and empty shops. Faced with mounting criticism and declining popularity, Gorbachev may have decided that he has no choice but to loosen the reins on the KGB and military. Says Amy Knight, a Soviet-affairs analyst at the U.S. Library of Congress: "He is resorting to authoritarian, coercive measures because he is losing his ability to use more legitimate powers...
...move applauded on the right, Gorbachev replaced Interior Minister Vadim Bakatin with Boris Pugo, a senior Communist Party functionary and former chief of the Latvian KGB. Conservatives in the 2,250-member Congress of People's Deputies, banded together in a 500-strong group called Soyuz (Union), have blamed Bakatin for tolerating ethnic violence and demanded his resignation. The right, however, may not be rid of Bakatin for long. Some Kremlin watchers expect him to be named head of the President's new national security council...
...against God and won (he neglected to leave a record of the game), went quite mad. The last great practitioner of truth, Bobby Fischer, after winning the world championship in 1972, disappeared into some apocalyptic sect in California and had the fillings in his teeth removed to stop the KGB transmissions...
...fail, forcing the Soviet President to adopt the 500-day plan after all. But for the moment the controversy is coming close to open economic war. The Russian parliament last week passed a law placing all property in Russian territory, except that belonging to the Soviet military or the KGB, under its control. Gorbachev had earlier got the Supreme Soviet to grant him power to fire the heads of businesses that refuse to obey orders from the central government. It remains to be seen which jurisdiction can make its claims stick...