Word: mikhail
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...Soviet p.r. offensive was actually launched by the late leader Leonid Brezhnev. But his heavy-handed attempts to scare Europe into abandoning deployment of American intermediate-range missiles only succeeded in fostering greater NATO coherence and determination. The new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, has shown a lighter touch. He has skillfully postured as peacemaker and portrayed the Americans as warmongers. His appointments also reflect a preoccupation with p.r.: new Propaganda Chief Alexander Yakovlev became thoroughly familiar with Western ways during ten years as Ambassador to Canada, and new Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze is an ebullient backslapper...
...unpredictable tax-enforcement policy. The most battered victim is Yukos, the former Russian oil giant that is in its death throes after being hit with multibillion-dollar back-tax claims that its erstwhile owners say were part of a Kremlin campaign against them. A Moscow court last month sentenced Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former Yukos chief executive and a major shareholder, to nine years in jail on charges of tax evasion and fraud...
...stake in the firm, Power Machines, but the deal was blocked by Russia's antitrust authority, reportedly for national-security reasons. The firm's owners said this month that they are negotiating to sell a majority stake to the Russian government instead. "Success automatically makes you a target," says Mikhail Kozhokin, vice president of KROS, a major Russian consulting and promotional firm. "Once your business becomes a success, you'll have to spend 70% of your time defending rather than developing...
...speeches to the party faithful, Hu has said Western democracy is a "blind alley" for China, and he has excoriated the path to reform, with all its attendant chaos, taken in the Soviet Union by Mikhail Gorbachev. Hu's key policy initiative so far has been to strengthen, not weaken, the role of the Communist Party in Chinese life. "They believe the party is the only way that China can maintain political stability," says a China watcher in the U.S. government. "Political institutions outside the party are not to be trusted." In essence, the thinking goes, party discipline guarantees stability...
...CONVICTED. MIKHAIL KHODORKOVSKY, 41, former chief of Russian oil giant Yukos, who became the country's wealthiest oligarch as state industries were privatized after the collapse of the Soviet Union; on charges including tax evasion and fraud; in Moscow. The conviction ended a long trial that critics claimed was part of a politically motivated campaign by the Kremlin to deter the billionaire from financing opposition to Vladimir Putin and discourage independent business. Khodorkovsky, whose now-dwindled fortune was once estimated at $15 billion, was sentenced to nine years in prison, which will remove him from the scene well past Russia...