Word: leninistic
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...evolution of the Sino-Soviet relationship has followed a tortuous course. A decade of comradeship shattered in 1960 over China's resentment at forever being expected to let Moscow call the tune, and over Mao's charge that Nikita Khrushchev was diluting Marxist-Leninist dogma. Border talks in 1978 began to melt the two-decade freeze. But before normalcy could be achieved, two outbreaks of hostilities in Asia seriously disturbed China. One was the invasion of Kampuchea by Viet Nam, a Soviet ally, which eventually provoked a "punitive attack" by Chinese troops on Hanoi's territory. The second...
...legacies Ronald Reagan bequeathed to George Bush, few are as vexing as Nicaragua. Stripped of all its rhetoric, the Reagan Administration's policy was entirely geared to overthrowing the Sandinista regime. Put simply, it made no sense to negotiate with the Marxist-Leninist Sandinistas when the only deal the U.S. wanted was their abdication. And besides, they couldn't be trusted to live up to any agreement. Eight years, $250 million and one contra % army later, the Sandinistas are still in power. It was one of Reagan's starkest foreign policy failures, producing neither a military victory nor a diplomatic...
...most concrete reason for the West's 40-year rivalry with the Soviet Union is the thrusting, threatening nature of that empire. Historic Russian expansionism, the Marxist-Leninist ideology of global class conflict, and a Kremlin mind-set that security can come only through the insecurity of adversaries have combined to create a nation whose defensive instincts can be frighteningly offensive. In his speech, Gorbachev proposed to preclude any "outward-oriented use of force," a phrase that nicely captures the essence of Soviet military policy since World War II. More important were his promised troop cuts, not just their numbers...
Gorbachev's refrain of glasnost and perestroika also raises the specter of another Russian word, peredyshka, the old Leninist notion of seeking a "breathing space" by making temporary accommodations so that the revolution can eventually roar forward with renewed zeal...
...support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." The U.S. set about, through a combination of diplomacy, economic assistance and military alliances, to create an international environment that would "contain" the Soviet empire within its own boundaries, forcing the Marxist-Leninist-Stali nist system to stew in its own poisonous juices. The author of that strategy, George Kennan, believed Soviet Communism "bears within it the seeds of its own decay." Containment, he wrote in 1947, could eventually lead to "the gradual mellowing of Soviet power." But until then, he stressed, "there...