Word: leninism
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...that came from the French and Russian revolutions. "But," he added -- and a listener should always lean forward when Gorbachev begins a sentence with that conjunction -- "today we face a different world, for which we must seek a different road to the future." Marat may have been bemused, but Lenin most likely froze in mid-scowl...
...most profound quarrel many Westerners have with the Soviets is that their totalitarian system represses the individual. But Gorbachev stressed the Soviet goal of creating a "world community of states based on the rule of law." Sounding more like Jefferson than Lenin, he spoke of "ensuring the rights of the individual," guaranteeing "freedom of conscience" and forbidding persecution based on "political or religious beliefs...
Thatcher was hardly pleased, however, when Rakowski cited her policies as a precedent for another government assault on the outlawed Solidarity movement. As part of Rakowski's new economic reform program, the government announced, it would close down on Dec. 1 the famous Lenin shipyard in Gdansk, whose workers gave birth to Solidarity during a strike in 1980. Its 11,000 employees, including Solidarity's founder, Lech Walesa, a shipyard electrician for 21 years, would be forced to find jobs elsewhere...
Pruning such an unprofitable state-run enterprise may make economic sense -- the Lenin shipyard soaked up $18.6 million in subsidies last year -- but because the government's move was so obviously aimed at Solidarity, it threatened to set off a fresh round of political turmoil. The maneuver raised further doubts about whether the government would stick to the offer it made in August to Solidarity in exchange for ending labor unrest: "round-table" meetings during which the legalization of Solidarity could be discussed...
...Lenin was no more prescient. In 1916 he declared one of the goals of the Bolsheviks to be "the elimination of the fragmentation of humanity in petty states and the individualism of nations." He thought the workers of Germany would side with Russia after the Revolution of 1917, even though the two countries were still at war. The successors of Lenin and then Stalin seemed surprised when frustration with the Communist system merged with anti-Russian sentiment to help trigger such traumatic events as the Hungarian uprising of 1956, the Prague Spring of 1968 and the Polish Solidarity movement...