Word: lenin
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Materialistic is a Marxist term and, in the context of this lunatic search for Lenin's "genius," a kind one. A better word is reductionist: there is no better example of scientific reductionism than to look for--let alone to pretend to have found--the source of Lenin's powers in the pyramidal cells of his brain. Even if one were to concede that in principle, and in some far-off century, psychology will be reducible to anatomy, science will hardly give us the key to evil and genius, which are, after all, not physical but cultural phenomena. The problem...
...spirit looming over the first business session the Soviet leader has ever held with top American officials was that of Lenin, whose brooding fervor seemed to pervade the exchange. Huge portraits of him decorated Red Square in anticipation of last week's anniversary parade of the Bolshevik Revolution; a portrait of Lenin even peered over Shultz's shoulder in the austere Kremlin conference room where the talks were held. Gorbachev opened with a comment that "most often misunderstandings come from a lack of knowledge." Shultz replied: "That's right, although sometimes I know cases where I wish I didn...
...part from his meeting with the Shultz team, Gorbachev has been keeping a low presummit profile. He made only obligatory public appearances at last week's celebrations of the 68th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, reviewing the traditional parade of Soviet military might from atop the Lenin Mausoleum in Red Square on Thursday and delivering a brief address at a Kremlin reception expressing hope for a "fruitful" summit. But the Revolution Day symbolism was every bit as unyielding as any of Gorbachev's remarks to his American visitors. NO TO STAR WARS proclaimed many of the posters tacked up around...
Karpov, on the other hand, is what a Swiss newspaper called Homo sovieticus: a culture hero with close ties to the late leader Leonid Brezhnev, recipient of the Order of Lenin and a strong voice in the inner circle of Soviet chess. Owner of an impressive collection of rare stamps, the chilly and distant Muscovite is a well-known ruble millionaire who is rumored to be a dollar one as well. Although he enjoys rare Soviet amenities like a mobile telephone in his car, Karpov does not ignite the imagination. "Style?" he once puzzled. "I have no style...
...that the Soviet Union would never start a war. But in the reprinted speeches, the General Secretary often lapses into eye-glazing Marxist clichés: "The time we live in will go down in history as a time of intense class struggle in the world arena," Gorbachev stated on Lenin's birthday in 1983. "Imperialist reaction can hide behind many masks, but it cannot hide the fact that its foreign course is dictated, even today, by narrowly selfish class interests...