Word: politburos
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...Give the people a greater voice. Liberal reformists contend that stability is built on economic prosperity and greater citizen participation. "How can you do your work if people run away as soon as they see you?" asked Li Ruihuan, a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, in an interview with the People's Daily. "We should talk about something that the people are interested in and that can help them do away with their worries." None of the would-be successors to Deng can spin such sentiments into a platform of action, however, as long as the so-called gang...
Last week Gorbachev spent considerable time trying to head off the election of his most influential critic, former Politburo member Boris Yeltsin, as president of the Russian federation. He met with Lithuanian Prime Minister Kazimiera Prunskiene for nearly two hours in an attempt to persuade her that, at a minimum, her republic must suspend its two-month-old declaration of independence. It may be a measure of his domestic difficulties that Gorbachev's most solid accomplishment came in foreign affairs. After four days of talks between U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze in Moscow...
...stalked the Kremlin anterooms in the glare of TV lights were understandable. "In politics," he grumbled, "the public doesn't accept pluralism. Perestroika depends on public opinion, and it is conservative." But Gorbachev's candidate for the presidency of the Russian federation, Alexander Vlasov, a nonvoting member of the Politburo and prime minister of the federation, hardly seems the < stirring leader needed to carry out his boss's vision. When Vlasov delivered an hour-long report last week, it was so plodding that not even Gorbachev seemed to be listening. He sat in a VIP box and conferred with...
What Gorbachev really wants to do is defeat Yeltsin, 59, a onetime ally who was fired from the Politburo 2 1/2 years ago, after he delivered a stinging denunciation of foot dragging by some of his conservative colleagues. But Yeltsin rose from the political dead by urging even greater and faster reforms than Gorbachev proposed. A Yeltsin victory could mark the beginning of the end for Gorbachev's brand of perestroika. Russia contains 75% of the Soviet Union's land, half of its people and most of its natural resources, which many Russians complain are being used to develop...
Since December, pro-democracy activists have turned the heat on the ruling party with a series of demonstrations. In March they won a surprising victory when the Communist Party replaced its five-member Politburo with a younger, more progressive team and promised to hold multiparty elections for a bicameral parliament by this July. The opposition feels those changes do not go far enough. At a four-day congress in April, the ruling party approved plans for greater freedom for party members and rejected the Leninist principle of democratic centralism. But after intense infighting, the congress re-elected the top party...