Word: offed
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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The Soviet Union has formidable reserves of resiliency, as it showed during the crisis of Hitler's invasion. But what if the dark forebodings of a Soviet screenwriter came true?
The ramifications of this possibility are so serious that they ought to worry the West more than they do. Would a complete Soviet collapse, after all, be a good or a bad thing?
Evidence hinting at such an eventuality is widespread. Economically, the country is barely functional. At least 43 million Soviets live below the official poverty level of 75 rubles a month ($1,500 annually) and some regions of the country have resorted to widespread rationing of even the most essential goods...
Riding atop the economic woes is the horseman of ethnic anarchy amid the 15 national republics that constitute the Soviet Union. Armenia and Azerbaijan are nearly at war with each other, Moldavia has been crippled by ethnically inspired strikes, Georgians are demanding an end to the "Soviet empire," and in...
Such radicalism would not be possible without Gorbachev's glasnost. But the new openness in the Soviet media has also exposed irrational superstitions reminiscent of the last days of Czar Nicholas II. The TASS news agency reports with a straight face that aliens stepped out of UFOs in Voronezh. On...