Word: life
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...obstacles that Gorbachev now faces. Yeltsin's triumph, along with the defeat of party hacks from Siberia to Lithuania, represented a rousing endorsement of Gorbachev's vision of perestroika. But it also represented a feisty revolt against the failure of his reforms to improve the harsh realities of Soviet life...
...answer again involves contradictions. Life is clearly far better these days: the fear that was the most oppressive aspect of daily existence has been replaced by a torrent of free expression, while experiments with market principles show faint signs of sparking economic success. Life is just as clearly no better at all: the shelves in the shops are more barren than when Gorbachev took office, the limited economic reforms serve mainly to reveal how hopelessly ossified the economy is, and the flirtation with freedom has frayed the seams binding the empire's diverse nationalities...
Translated to a personal level, this means that day-to-day life in the Soviet Union is as difficult as ever. Not only are big consumer items like refrigerators and washing machines in short supply -- the average wait to buy the cheapest Soviet car is seven years -- but staples of everyday life are also scarce. Long lines snake into the street for such ordinary items as sausage, rice, coffee and candy...
LONELY WOMAN SEARCHING FOR A LIFE COMPANION. Preferably a single Moscow male, but not this one: he insults, robs, then leeches on the lonely 43-year-old who placed the ad. Director Vyacheslav Krishtofovich locates Soviet malaise in this wry fable of a modern Soviet woman desperately seeking Comrade Right...
...LIFE AND DESTINY by Vasili Grossman (Knizhnaya Palata, 1988). An epic novel about the Battle of Stalingrad that some call the 20th century's War and Peace. Completed in the 1960s, the book was suppressed during Khrushchev's regime for daring to agonize over the conflict between personal freedom and Communism...