Word: perms
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...excited murmur ripples along the ragged line of shoppers, snaking away from the tiny tobacco shop on Lenin Street. It is 10 a.m. on an overcast day in the provincial city of Perm. Many in the crowd, pressed against the closed plate-glass doors, have been waiting more than four hours just for this moment. A flatbed truck pulls up with a precious cargo of cigarettes. As two men begin unloading, the impatient shoppers surge forward. There is a resounding whack. A young policeman, standing in the truck, hits his billy club against the wooden side panel in warning...
...even matches must be bought with ration coupons -- assuming, of course, that state- run stores have the items. At harvest time, a shortage of sugar caused a near panic; without it, fruits and berries from family garden plots could not be made into preserves for the coming winter. In Perm, as elsewhere in provincial Russia, food and tobacco rate higher on the day's agenda than revolution. Young couples continue to lay wedding bouquets at the Lenin monument instead of daubing it with anticommunist slogans...
...local officials met on the second day of the attempted coup to decide their response, some 5,000 demonstrators gathered outside in support of Boris Yeltsin. The timely show of "people power" helped tip the balance, and now the Russian tricolor flutters proudly atop the closed offices of the Perm regional soviet and the city council. Two empty plywood panels are all that identify the former Communist Party headquarters. But if Russian democrats hope to consolidate the victory they won over hard-liners at the barricades of Moscow, they will have to do more than hoist flags and close down...
...Perm's reformers worry, however, that local governments, still dominated by communist apparatchiks, may yet stifle the revolution in the provinces. The only thing that distinguishes the Perm regional soviet from Moscow's discredited national parliament, they joke, is that in Perm there are no electronic voting machines. Radical reformers, in fact, want Yeltsin to expand presidential control over regional executive bodies and appoint his own administrative representative in Perm to see that reforms are carried out. Contends local political columnist Vladimir Vinichenko: "We must use some authoritarian methods to ensure the victory of democracy...
Life aboard Yeltsin's campaign plane has its perks. The Tupolev jet is several cuts above most Aeroflot planes, with a clean interior and flight attendants who actually attend. Dinner on the flight to Perm included caviar on eggs, fresh salads, half a chicken and unlimited Pepsi, tea and coffee. Yeltsin's bodyguards, Makarov pistols dangling in shoulder holsters, bantered with officials and reporters in the aisles. The Soviet reporters passed around the vodka and caught up on sleep. The phone system is so bad that Russian reporters working domestically don't bother to write on laptop computers; they...