Word: perestroika
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...residents, Mikhail Gorbachev's approval rating stands at 79%. Buoyed by the success of his U.S. visit, Gorbachev enjoyed a popularity rating of 92% in December. By March, those who expressed doubts climbed from 5% to about 12%, reflecting the reality of shortages and dissatisfaction with the progress of perestroika...
Seventy-one percent agree that Gorbachev's reform program is encountering difficulties, and 20% think it has been braked, but only 1 out of 10 believes that perestroika is a deviation from Marxism-Leninism. Though 1 out of 4 says his material life has improved in the past three years, another 25% (and 34% of people over 60) say things have got worse...
...body and soul, and later in public opinion. While Joseph Stalin and Leonid Brezhnev were accorded elaborate state funerals, their reputations since then have changed quite markedly. Stalin is viewed negatively by 62% and positively by only 7%, though that rating is almost double among people who see perestroika as a deviation from Marxism-Leninism...
...must ask, Can you rebuild a pyramid into the Parthenon? The ancient Egyptian pyramids are rightly considered the most enduring of architectural forms -- much more durable and solid than the Parthenon. And the legitimate question arises: Do pyramids lend themselves to perestroika? It would be possible, of course, to adorn them with decorative colonnades, to cover them with molding, to suspend Greek porticoes on them. But would these changes enhance them? Wouldn't they spoil the fundamental style and profile...
...trying to use this transparent metaphor to explain why -- despite all my sympathy for the works of perestroika -- I share the doubts of many about the reforms that are being called forth to rejuvenate the Soviet system in the democratic manner...