Word: komsomols
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Early in 1967 a student at the Moscow Institute of Energy invited me to attend meetings of the Komsomol ((Communist Party youth wing)) Committee to Save Baikal. I learned that in the late 1950s, Orlov, the minister in charge of the paper industry, had ordered construction of a large cellulose complex on the lake's shores to produce a particularly durable viscose rayon cord for airplane tires. It was assumed that the pure Baikal water would facilitate polymerization ((a chemical process in which many small molecules combine to build much larger molecules called polymers)) and the resulting fibers would...
...young man, at one point you were a convinced Communist, a member of the Komsomol. How did you come to change your ideas and become a Christian believer...
...event, the Stavropol period remains the most obscure of Gorbachev's life. It is known that he rose fast, from a minor job in the local Komsomol to its first secretary after less than a year, then through a variety of Komsomol and, later, party jobs. By 1962, when he was only 31, he was choosing party members for promotion throughout Stavropol Krai. Finally in 1970, at the age of 39, he became first secretary of the territory, a job equivalent to governor of an area roughly the size of South Carolina, with about 2.4 million people. Along...
...Gorbachev showed an avid interest in the press. Vladimir Maximov, a writer now living in Paris who worked for a Stavropol Komsomol newspaper in the 1950s, recalls that the young official often visited the paper's offices for a chat. "He would sit down with us in a casual manner," says Maximov. "We would uncork a bottle of wine ((for all his antialcoholism campaigning, Gorbachev still enjoys an occasional drink)) and usually talk politics. Khrushchev's report on the crimes of the Stalinist era had recently appeared. The entire country was still reeling from shock." Maximov and others of Gorbachev...
Gorbachev was not like that at all. He was a quiet and pleasant host with a reputation throughout the district for incorruptibility. Writer Maximov relates a story about a mutual friend, a poet, who asked Gorbachev as a young Komsomol official to help him buy a Volga sedan. Gorbachev obligingly used his influence to speed delivery. The poet promptly sold the car on the black market and returned to ask Gorbachev for help in buying another. Says Maximov: "Gorbachev did not usually lose his temper, but on that occasion he started shouting and threw the poet out of his office...