Word: leninist
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Gorbachev's own vision remains that of a Soviet Union that is sufficiently open to be honest about its problems but sufficiently centralized to remain a powerful Leninist state. The trouble is, how many other Soviet citizens share it? The glasnost he unleashed has turned into a dangerous tiger for 280 million people to ride. If Gorbachev offers no realistic alternative to continued Leninism, he may be forced to try caging it once more -- which he probably will -- or to face the dissolution of the "socialist sixth of the earth...
Similarly, at a meeting of the opposition group New Forum in Potsdam's Erloser Church, an overflow crowd of 5,000 booed, whistled and stamped their feet when party theoretician Otto Reinhold, until recently one of the East German guardians of Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy, proclaimed his conversion to reform by saying that the constitutionally enshrined leading role of the Socialist Unity Party (S.E.D.) was a thing of the past. From the audience a voice shouted, "Wendehals!" (turncoat), unleashing an uproar in the audience...
...articulated, sometimes inarticulately, by a Chief Executive who has no flair for geopolitical grand rhetoric and has a tendency to step on his applause lines. Still, the change on the American side, if it continues, could turn out to be as important as Gorbachev's abandonment of the Leninist plan for winning the zero-sum game of history. The American equivalent of what the Soviets call new political thinking is all the more significant coming from the President of Prudence...
...party secretary to enforce Communist discipline. Before Deng's reforms, there was no question that the Communist secretary dominated, even if he was functionally illiterate in basic business precepts. Since 1984, though, Beijing has directed that party secretaries leave operations to the factories' designated managers -- a direct slap at Leninist ideology, which holds that since the party is the only body capable of enforcing the will of the workers, factories must be under party control...
...this force field of Marxism, as developed in the Soviet Union, has such an impact that it gets into the brain of the young man and little by little takes over. From age 17 or 18, I did change internally, and from that time, I became a Marxist, a Leninist, and believed in all these things. I lived that way up through the university and the war and up until prison, but in prison, I encountered a very broad variety of people. I saw that my convictions did not have a solid basis, could not stand up in dispute...