Word: kremlins
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
When Stalin died in 1953, he was far gone in paranoia, convinced that a cabal of Jewish doctors was trying to poison him. Only after shooting Stalin's reptilian police chief, Lavrenty Beria, did the Kremlin survivors, notably the new Communist Party Secretary, Nikita Khrushchev, try to shift to a new policy known as "the thaw." In a four-hour speech before the 20th Party Congress, supposedly secret but widely leaked, Khrushchev described to the faithful for the first time the full range of Stalin's crimes. ("But where were you during all those years?" one listener asked Khrushchev, according...
That same year, 1956, the thaw melted too quickly as far as the Kremlin was concerned. Polish crowds demonstrated to demand a change of leadership. The Hungarians even overthrew their government and enjoyed one heady week of independence. Then Khrushchev sent in Soviet tanks to restore the old order. When he was forced out in 1964, Leonid Brezhnev seemed even more determined to maintain that old order forever, sending more tanks to suppress Czech independence in 1968 and warning that he would do so again whenever necessary. He too proclaimed a new constitution in 1977, declaring more strongly than ever...
There was no need to ask. As the Kremlin emissaries filed onto the stage, the answer was written all over their faces. The normally dour Lukyanov let a grin slip. The balding and bespectacled Yakovlev looked like a schoolboy who had just received straight A's. After praising the plenum as a "major step . . . away from an authoritarian-bureaucr atic model of socialism toward a democratic society that has opted for socialism," Yakovlev was asked how the meeting had affected Gorbachev's position. A smile, then the reply: "Very, very positively...
...minded reformers staged their most impressive political strike so far. Indeed, it is difficult to come up with anything comparable since the early years of the Bolshevik regime. A crowd of more than 200,000 wound its way through the center of Moscow to the very shadow of the Kremlin walls for a rally promoting democratic change. The message was clear from the banners bobbing above the marchers: SOVIET COMMUNIST PARTY, WE'RE TIRED OF YOU! . . . AWAY WITH LIGACHEV AND HIS CLIQUE . . . 72 YEARS ON THE ROAD TO NOWHERE. If reform-shy regional party secretaries gathered for the plenum needed...
...legal and political advantages." The * Communists, he said, recognized that alternative parties might develop and were prepared to cooperate and conduct dialogue "with all organizations committed to the Soviet constitution and the social system endorsed in this constitution." But the statement did not spell out what the Kremlin's attitude would be toward political groups that do not support a socialist system...