Word: kremlins
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Courage came so naturally to Sakharov that it heartened others. Dressed in a worn suit and bedroom slippers, the tall, perpetually bent-over man with shy eyes displayed a lion's boldness when defying the Kremlin. Mocking his own quixotic ways, he once dubbed himself Andrei the Blessed, an honorific that in Russian connotes a kind of holy innocence. Said computer scientist Valentin Turchin, a fellow dissident who emigrated to the U.S.: "There are two categories of people who have left their imprint on humanity: leaders and saints. Sakharov was in the category of saints." One mournful colleague in Moscow...
...West, he repeatedly pointed to the failure of Soviet society to fulfill the promise of Communist ideology. Sakharov's writings on domestic affairs irked the leadership almost as much as his criticism of Brezhnev's foreign policy, which he characterized as imperialist and expansionist. His mistrust of Kremlin intentions was so strong that he said in 1983 that it might be best for the U.S. to "spend a few billion dollars on MX missiles" in order to bargain more effectively with the Soviets...
...independent candidates in national elections earlier this year and trounced establishment party hacks. In the Russian Republic itself, there is mounting anger and frustration with empty shops and suffocating bureaucracy that could easily swell the rolls of a gaggle of independent parties. Politburo member Yegor Ligachev, speaking for the Kremlin conservatives whose favor Gorbachev must still curry, has said flatly that multiple parties would "lead to the disintegration of the U.S.S.R...
...even the Kremlin realizes that Article 6 as now written is out of date. This provision entered the Soviet constitution only in 1977, at the height of what is now denounced as the "era of stagnation." Sakharov and other liberals have made the repeal of Article 6 a litmus test of the leadership's commitment to genuine progress. They have substantial support. The Supreme Soviet voted 198 to 173 last month to debate Article 6; only 28 abstentions kept the measure off the agenda of this week's session of the Congress of People's Deputies. Gorbachev recognizes that...
Gorbachev has tried to dampen the ardor for repealing Article 6, claiming that giving up one-party rule would be a capitulation. But there were signs last week that the Kremlin was willing to fiddle with the text. Noting that Article 6 was "not a taboo subject," Politburo ideologist Vadim Medvedev said the present wording should not be kept "at all cost" and ought to be "brought into line with the party's new role in society...