Word: modicums
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Modicum of Courage. Eastern Europe's breakaway from Russian rule began in 1956, when Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin at the Soviet 20th Party Congress in his seven-hour "secret speech." By cracking the icon of invincibility that had held Russia in thrall, Khrushchev also unlocked-unwittingly-the forces of Eastern European nationalism. Says one Washington observer: "Nationalism is the strongest force in Eastern Europe today, stronger than ideology, stronger than the Communist parties themselves." Columbia's Kremlinologist Zbigniew Brzezinski puts it flatly: "East Europe is where the dream of Communist internationalism lies buried...
Khrushchev's speech was coincidental with popular anti-Communist risings in Poland and Hungary. Nations that had been captured and coerced by the Red Army after World War II suddenly found a modicum of courage-though Khrushchev's tanks in Budapest and America's unwillingness to aid the Hungarian revolt with action made caution mandatory. But Moscow finally realized that it could no longer hope to retain loyalties in Eastern Europe by mere dictation. Russian forces began withdrawing from the satellites; by 1958, the 55,000 Red Army troops that had arrived in Rumania 14 years earlier...
...clocks have all stopped. A small factory puffs contentedly away near Luangprabang, distilling opium into heroin. Although only 15% of the population uses money and the country is almost entirely dependent on U.S. aid ($56 million in the past year), business is booming, and there has been a modicum of economic progress. Some high ways have been resurfaced, villages modernized, food production boosted, and plans are afoot for an ambitious hydroelectric project...
...keeping with its subdued editorial policy, the Christian Science Monitor announced a modicum of change last week with a minimum of fanfare. Over coffee and pastry in Manhattan's Plaza Hotel, Editor in Chief Erwin D. Canham and other Monitor executives described the newspaper's new look to assembled newsmen...
...days are over when garden catalogues were synonyms for sucker bait. Thanks to such groups as All-America Selections, which tests the new varieties, the big companies now make a painstaking effort to describe their wares honestly, and to illustrate them in true-to-life colors, along with a modicum of imagination-whetting blarney...