Word: landmasses
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...demand and win their freedom. Now it seems to be Moscow's turn. It was relatively easy for the British, French and Dutch to give up colonies that were far from home and scattered around the globe. By contrast, the Soviet empire, although enormous, is concentrated on the Eurasian landmass. In debating whether the U.S.S.R.'s rebellious regions can become its peaceful neighbors, Western policymakers and analysts are turning to a historical parallel: the vanished domain of the Ottoman Turks...
...caused a sensation. With his huge popular following, he could spark a wave of defections. More important, he appears to have established himself as the leader most in sync with the public appetite for rapid change. As head of the Russian republic, which covers 76% of the U.S.S.R.'s landmass and is home to 147 million of its 289 million people, he holds a strong power base where he is now free to try his own more radical brand of reform. Even if the party does not split formally, Gorbachev could be left trying to implement perestroika through a rump...
...evolved out of centuries of aggression, anarchy and pure accident. About 500 years ago, the Muscovy state that was beginning to emerge from Mongol rule extended over just a few hundred miles on the upper reaches of the Volga. Today the U.S.S.R. represents one-sixth of the world's landmass, and its 289 million people include Armenians, Buddhists, Muslims, Tatars, Uzbeks, Yakuts -- more than a hundred different national and religious groups united mainly by their mistrust of their rulers and one another...
This immense landmass, so long made immutable and monolithic by rule from the Kremlin, is now quaking under the impact of Gorbachev's reforms. The Soviet republics are beginning to snap the political and economic bonds linking them to the once all-powerful center in Moscow. With the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia in the vanguard, some of the imprisoned peoples are battering the outside walls and intend to leap to freedom. It now seems certain that the center cannot hold onto all 15 republics. What was unthinkable only a few months ago has now become reality...
Today we are confronted with a Stalinist map of the country, and have used it as the basis for carrying out perestroika, accepting this unified landmass as a historic entity. Our tensions spring from an inadequate understanding of a most crucial fact: the U.S.S.R. is not a country, nor is it a state. The Eurasian territory that is marked as such on the maps is a world of worlds made of different cultures and civilizations. It is a neighborhood of states and nations that are tired of their colonial and colonizing past, that have been tortured and humiliated by Stalinist...