Word: peasant
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...lived with hope and excitement through the days of Lenin's victory could not help feeling betrayal and disgust at the severe, quasi-dictatorial methods which the government now employed to deal with an increasingly desperate situation. The miniscule rations in the cities, the forced requisitioning of peasant grain, the growth of a centralized, omnipotent bureaucratic machine-all seemed to belie the straightforward, liberationist goals to which the revolution had aspired...
...sailors had defended the Bolsheviks during the civil war, and they had withstood heavy and constant bombardment of their island fortress in doing so. But in late 1920, as the conflict drew to a close, they were becoming highly sensitive to the wave of strikes and peasant revolts which began sweeping the country with the tightening of the government's reins. "A restless and independent breed who loathed all privilege and authority," Paul Avrich writes in Kronstadt 1921, "They seemed forever on the verge of exploding into open violence against their officers or against the central government, which they regarded...
...mass of strikes and rural unrest that nearly brought the regime to its knees. As winter set in, supply levels in the major cities approached subsistence levels and the populace began blaming the party for all the misfortune. Labor protest crippled Petrograd in February 1921, and peasant revolt flared as never before. The government deftly maneuvered itself out of these crises but nevertheless felt the blow, and at a party congress in March, Lenin finally introduced the agricultural liberalization that was to become the cornerstone of his New Economic Policy...
Despite such progress, however, previous P.R.I, governments have been criticized for failing to improve the life of the Mexican peasant. The regime of outgoing President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz has also been attacked for its handling of the Mexico City riots that preceded the 1968 Olympic Games. When police and soldiers shot at least 33 people to death and wounded 500 others, Diaz Ordaz's enemies charged that the President's "guided democracy" was really a dictatorship. More than 100 students arrested for rioting are in prison, some still awaiting trial...
...they are not so sure. His tireless stumping, plus the fact that he is the father of eight, persuaded many Mexicans that Echeverría possesses what might be called "macharismo"-the requisite Latin American machismo mixed with political charisma. Dressed casually wherever he went, he dined with peasant families, spoke informally about national problems and debated with students whenever he could. Defending the jailing of rioters, he said: "Not one was arrested for writing a novel or a poem or for his way of thinking." The students were not always prepared to listen. In Chihuahua, they dug a moat...