Word: mikhail
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Elsewhere in the Communist world, leaders like Mikhail Gorbachev and Poland's Wojciech Jaruzelski are trying to break old patterns by channeling unrest and rising expectations into a limited evolution toward more democracy. China's old men seem to have missed the message -- and sacrificed much to their desire to retain absolute power. Forced to choose between accommodating change and maintaining the regime, they chose tyranny...
...with the impact of a revelation, especially since it coincided with a very different sort of democratization taking place in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. While the leaders of China dithered over what to do about the students' occupation of the political heart of the country, President Mikhail Gorbachev presided over the opening of a Congress whose members included purged former comrades, dissident intellectuals and outspoken non-Russian nationalists. In Poland the first halfway-open election in four decades produced a humiliating defeat for the Communist Party...
...Soviet Union, the latest outbreak of ethnic unrest in Uzbekistan was a reminder of what may be the operative difference between Deng Xiaoping's realm and Mikhail Gorbachev's: in the Middle Kingdom, things fall apart from the center outward, while in the U.S.S.R. it is the other way around. Both face a common challenge in devising ways to meet the demands of their citizens...
...Polish experience posed a special dilemma for Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. On the one hand, Warsaw's bold moves toward economic and political liberalization would have been unthinkable had Gorbachev not come to power in 1985 and launched his own reforms. On the other hand, the crushing defeat of the Polish Communists could be exploited by Soviet hard-liners as an argument against political reform at home. In fact, Gorbachev's party seemed in little danger of suffering a Polish-style humiliation at the polls. For one thing, the Soviet reform impulse is coming down from the leadership rather than...
That speech drew a standing ovation from virtually the entire assemblage. Even President Mikhail Gorbachev applauded briefly. More significantly, the new KGB boss, Vladimir Kryuchkov, told reporters after Vlasov's moving outburst that the new Soviet legislature would consider following the U.S. fashion and naming a committee to oversee intelligence operations...