Word: kremlins
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...about as representative of Russia as New York is of America. Yeltsin himself is partly to blame for being so out of touch. Suffering from an apparently serious heart ailment, the man many Russians liken to a modern-day czar has for the past two years been a virtual Kremlin recluse. And his inner circle of aides, forever jockeying for position, seem to have concluded long ago that bearing bad news to their boss is the least career-enhancing service they can render. Given his insularity, the President's wide-eyed wonder at the pounding he took in Yaroslavl...
...growing fitfully almost everywhere in Russia will have a better chance of succeeding peacefully and more quickly than if Zyuganov takes power. For besides his economic changes, Yeltsin's true legacy thus far has been his acquiescence in the decentralization of power. "It has shifted dramatically downward from the Kremlin and outward from Moscow," says Strobe Talbott. The result is that Russia is fast becoming a pluralistic nation, but it has yet to make the transition to a civil society...
...those he once ruled. Free-market liberals disdain his vacillating support for economic reform; Communists and nationalists detest him for his role in ending the empire. No matter. Gorbachev is waging a quixotic race for Russia's presidency and this day is heading 700 miles south of the Kremlin to plead his case in Volgograd...
Russians have little good to say about the so-called democrats who came to power after the aborted hard-line coup of August 1991. The Kremlin reformers were largely unprepared to rule, and many soon proved the equals of the apparatchiks they replaced in enriching themselves at public expense. Very quickly, the word democrat became synonymous with incompetent and corrupt. Ask anyone on the streets of Moscow what they think of Russian democracy today and the most likely answer will be "What democracy?" Western diplomats may resort to sophistry in explaining how Yeltsin remains the country's best democratic hope...
...find Russian-style democracy, one must seek it not in the political system but in the new openness of Russian society. It can be glimpsed in the marches against the war in Chechnya by mothers of draft-age men, in the anti-Kremlin diatribes printed by tabloids that leave an unpleasant ink smudge on the fingers. There are less appetizing signs as well in the thuggish youths wearing gym suits who hawk alcohol and cigarettes in sheet-metal kiosks, keeping one step ahead of the law, and in the smug young bankers who make million-dollar deals in currency exchange...