Word: petersburgs
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...heard hints of an early transfer of power, but the idea seemed improbable. Yeltsin, they felt, was determined to stay. This was partly why the top officials--even as they bade Yeltsin goodbye--were struggling for a consensus on Putin, who has risen from deputy mayor of St. Petersburg to President in less than four years. Some administration officials thumbnail him as a "smooth cop"--a man tough enough to clean up Russia but charming enough to keep ties to the West. Other analysts, however, particularly at the Pentagon, are worried about Putin's disregard for democratic practices...
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in 1952. Little is known about his childhood and family life, though he is married and has two teenage daughters. Putin graduated from Leningrad State University with a law degree in 1975. On graduation he was quickly recruited into the KGB, which he served first in Moscow and then in East Germany. The acting President's spy life remains as much a mystery as the rest of his biography. Friends insist he was involved in "economic intelligence," designed to help the Soviet Union's badly antiquated industrial sector. After Yeltsin...
Terminally self-absorbed, Evgeny Onegin (Ralph Fiennes) rejects Tatyana (Liv Tyler), the pretty, thoughtful, romantic girl from the neighboring estate. After marrying into the St. Petersburg aristocracy, she in turn rejects his belatedly awakened passion. Aside from a foolish, deadly duel, that's about all that happens in this handsome, well-acted, richly textured adaptation of Alexander Pushkin's novel. But first-time director Fiennes, the actor's sister, has a sharp eye for the early signs of a society's decay, a cool sympathy for the languid irrelevancy of the 19th century Russian gentry as it murmurs toward prerevolutionary...