Word: mikhail
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...British intelligence, elements of the Soviet army and KGB actually rehearsed a coup (under the guise of a countercoup) in February of this year. June brought what was soon called the "constitutional-coup attempt." Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov asked the Supreme Soviet for the authority to issue decrees without Mikhail Gorbachev's knowledge, but was rebuffed. In late July hard- liners published an announcement appealing for "those who recognize the terrible plight into which our country has fallen" to support dramatic action to end disorder. They might as well have put up billboards shouting COUP...
...weakening of the backbone.) After initially cabling Soviet ambassadors around the world to put a "good face" on the coup, Bessmertnykh climbed out of his sickbed to denounce the plot only after it was falling apart -- too late, as it turned out, to keep from getting fired. General Mikhail Moiseyev, Chief of the Soviet General Staff, was perhaps conveniently on vacation in the Crimea when the coup began. But some of his subordinates claimed he wrote out the orders for the troops to occupy key points in Moscow -- as well as the orders for them to go back to their...
...before joining the Communist Party. By 1985 he had carved out a regional reputation as the reform-minded first secretary of the Sverdlovsk district central committee; it was enough to bring him to the attention of another reformer from the hinterland, the newly installed Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev soon appointed Yeltsin first secretary of the Moscow city party committee. Thereupon the tall, bulky technocrat seemed to settle into a sort of permanent guerrilla war with his superiors in the Politburo and with his often corrupt underlings throughout the city's rambling bureaucracy...
...years, as they watched Mikhail Gorbachev bull his way through history, remaking his country, his era and himself, Soviets and Westerners alike wondered whether there was anything he couldn't do. Wasn't there some innovation so radical, or some capitulation so abject, that he simply couldn't get away with it? Like scientists pondering the limits of an anomalous but potent force of nature, Kremlinologists speculated about the existence of a "red line" that Gorbachev could not cross without reaping the whirlwind...
...been waging a campaign of intimidation against the democratically elected leadership of the republic. The same is true in neighboring Latvia, where Black Berets raided the republic's interior ministry in Riga, leaving five people dead. In their zeal to enforce the Soviet constitution and the presidential decrees of Mikhail Gorbachev, OMON forces have subsequently carried out a series of surprise attacks, seizing buildings, ransacking customs posts and, on several occasions, shooting at people who got in their...