Word: mikhail
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...past, an increase in international tension was always accompanied by increases in editorial censorship. Just after Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech in Fulton, Mo., in 1946, Andrei Zhdanov issued his notorious edict subjecting Poet Anna Akhmatova and Writer Mikhail Zoshchenko to insulting criticism. Two years later Dmitri Shostakovich's music was denounced as unpatriotic...
...When Mikhail Baryshnikov fled a touring Soviet dance troupe in Toronto in 1974, he left a homeland he loved and a professional life he could no longer bear. A performer of electrifying excitement, "Misha" saw nothing but stagnation in the rigid Soviet system. In the U.S., however, his dreams have come true: he danced the gamut of Western choreography, now heads a major company, the American Ballet Theatre, and is making his third film, Giselle. His second movie, White Nights, tells the tale of an emigre star whose plane crashes in the Soviet Union, forcing him to outwit...
Last week the seemingly unthinkable happened. In one of the most startling turns yet in Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev's campaign of glasnost (openness), Baryshnikov was asked to visit Moscow to dance with the Bolshoi Ballet. The invitation came from Yuri Grigorovich, the artistic director of the Bolshoi, who was in the U.S. to arrange a tour by the Soviet company, which has not been to the U.S. since 1979. Baryshnikov hesitated. "That's very nice," he reportedly answered. "But I'll have to think about...
...level, the event was another example of the increasing sophistication of Soviet propaganda ministers under the leadership of General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. Government officials orchestrated the show by reversing a long-standing policy virtually barring the return of emigrants and then scheduling a large group to return on one day. The Soviet press gave heavy play to the arrivals, including some Jews, pronouncing that the sorry souls had found "ruthless competition, the spirit of money-making, crime and drug addiction" in America...
Both the admission of misconduct and the public disclosure of punitive action against a ranking KGB officer were virtually unheard-of events. They seemed to indicate that even the elite secret police will not be immune to Mikhail Gorbachev's calls for glasnost, a program of openness aimed at exposing shortcomings and abuses of power in Soviet life. Some analysts speculate that the Kremlin is determined to bring the KGB under control. It will undoubtedly take time, and more disciplinary actions, before KGB agents lose their enthusiasm for trampling on the civil rights of Soviet citizens. But the incident...